Black & Rubber Acrylic Paint Set

[Mike]

Black & Rubber Paint Set

Lifecolor

I’m already a fan of Lifecolor and their paint sets, and have been looking forward to this set, as it’s always difficult for the modeller to achieve a realistic black shade on a model. Most painting instructions would have you paint your tyres a true “black”, and this is also true of night fighters and anti-glare panels on the nose of your aircraft.

In truth, there is no such colour as black, as I remember being told by my art teacher at A Level. There are just shades of grey. In modelling she was most definitely right, and I’ve been using very dark greys instead of black for some years without anyone noticing! I’m not the only one of course, and the effects achievable with using anything but black make for a much more interesting range of hues, and take into account “aerial perspective”, or scale colour, where shades become paler and eventually fade to grey the further the viewer is from an object. I’ll not get into the pros & cons of scale colour here, as like any technique it has its adherents and detractors.

This set from Lifecolor gives you six shades of “black”, two of which are dedicated to different types of tyres, being (somewhat obviously) Tire Black (sic) and vulcanised rubber. These have a greeny and bluey tinge to the basic dark grey shade, replicating their intended use. The other four are dirty black, worn black, and burned black which are all a variation on a brownish shade. The final one is Deep Cockpit, which is almost a purple grey. Used in conjunction, some splendid variations in tone can be achieved on any model requiring a black finish.

As usual all these colours are matt, so a gloss coat will be required if you need a shiny finish.

Conclusion

A very useful set that will give the modeller the tools to create some fantastically varied blacks, no matter what their chosen genre. I can see this becoming a staple for my night fighter paint jobs.

Highly recommended

Review sample courtesy of:

[GordonD]

I can see that coming in handy for some of those more, ah, exotic figure models we see here from time to time...

[Julien]

Nice one.

I agree with you Mike Life colour is a great paint to use.

Julien

[Shar2]

I'm a complete enamel fan, but having used Lifecolors rust set I can see myself changing over to acrylics more and more.

[khimbar]

I'd never really though about black not being black before, very interesting thanks.