Churchill

Hi, these three are all by Zvezda in 1/100 scale. The models were made for wargaming, previously I've shaded wargames models quite strongly so that they their best from a distance, but with these I went for slightly softer shading and I think it works. The turret dedications are hand-painted, I know you can get decals but hand painting is actually less bother. thanks for looking.

If you're correct, then Vallejo are accurate with the early scheme. Vallejo's late scheme is very like the relic linked or posted earlier in this thread, with the pinkish tones in the RAL 8020. Mig Ammo is nowhere close to either scheme. Here's a couple a panzers I airbrushed in the Vallejo yesterday, early on the left, late on the right

TRIGGER WARNING The following post contains images of a distressing nature. Modellers of a nervous disposition are advised to have smelling salts on hand before reading further. Those who kindly followed my build of two DAK panzer III's will know that I made one in the early camouflage scheme of RAL 7008 on a base of RAL 8000, and the other in the later scheme of RAL 7027 on a base of RAL 8020. Early is on your left, late on your right in this shot: You'll also be aware that I had some issues with the physical properties of the paint brand I was using (Mig Ammo) and so I acquired the four colours in the Model Air range from Vallejo. For comparison purposes, here is a grid showing all eight paints, early on the left, late on the right, Mig on the top row, Vallejo on the bottom. Colours are brush-painted in double layers on plain white unprimed polystyrene and photographed in weak direct sunlight. For some this will be old news. Others will be shaken to the core. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness. earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria. One would expect some variance between manufacturers, even of standardised official colours like those defined by the RAL. But as you can see, these two paint makers, both of whom would doubtless claim to have carefully researched and produced highly authentic colours, have irreconcilably different ideas about what these paints actually looked like. I don't know about you, but my confidence in the accuracy of my models is badly shaken. For what it's worth, reading around the discussions on various sites and comparisons of relics said to still have their original paint on etc, Vallejo seems to have got it about right with the late scheme. Vallejo is also on the right lines with the early scheme but probably has the base colour rather too dark. Tiger 131 is painted in the early scheme and has that yellowy brown base as more of a mustard yellow. Here's a couple more panzers that I airbrushed yesterday, again the early is on the left, the late on the right: If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this post, try a stiff drink.

I said I'd upload a grid of the two DAK camouflage schemes by the two manufacturers (Mig and Vallejo) once I had all eight paints. Here it is. Not pretty, is it?

That Chory's chip 7027 also looks fairly close to Mig 8000 I've found that Vallejo's RAL 7027 is near identical to Mig's RAL 7008, they could certainly be used interchangeably. Neither version is much like the RAL 8000 I have though. Some variation between manufacturers is to be expected, but I'm astonished and puzzled at how radically different their versions of an official, at some point formally defined, paint colour can be - and that's why I started this thread. I have Model Air RAL 7008 and 8000 on order, when they arrive I'll put up a grid showing the two manufacturer's versions of the two original schemes.

I'll just leave this here, shall I?

I expect you're right, but I'll have to wait until I can get back down to Bovington. On the Tank Chats videos Tiger 131 tends to look almost dunkelgelb on my screen, but on videos shot outdoors when they're running it it looks a bit more like the Mig RAL8000/7008, albeit still a little lighter and yellower

To a certain extent, yes. There's a story about an artist who painted human figures very tall and slender. An art historian wrote a paper suggesting that this was evidence that the artist had developed an eye condition that causes vision to be distorted in one direction. The flaw in that theory will be obvious to you! However, impaired perception doesn't always work quite that way. If certain wavelengths are being filtered out by your eyes, then two swatches might appear the same to you but quite different to someone who is able to see that those wavelengths are present in one swatch but not the other.

If anyone wants to weigh in on DAK camo colours here I'd be interested in your views:

I noticed that the fender relic posted by @JackG above looks quite a lot like the RAL8000/RAL7008 tank in my post following it, so out of curiosity I made a comparison of Vallejo's RAL8020 and Mig's RAL8000. This time I painted them on white polystyrene sheet and photographed them in indirect sunlight. You can see that the 8000 is definitely greyer than the 8020 which has more orangey brown in it, but I'd say the fender is somewhere between the two in colour and a little lighter than either: I have a stock of dropper bottles, so perhaps I'll mix up a custom shade for future DAK builds (I have a Tiger and a PzIV to do).

@JackG Wow, that comparison shot of the eight versions really tells the story. Mig's version is very like the AK, the lightest and yellowest while Vallejo is the darkest. But the takeaway from that shot for me is that there is no consensus whatsoever among the manufacturers about what this colour looks like. Yes, the paper that I'd photographed is white and the phone camera's program may have darkened the shot to 18% grey overall, and paint can be a little darker on paper than on a less permeable surface, so my Vallejo paint is probably a little lighter than it looks on screen, but so is the Mig. When I first sprayed the Mig on a very light gray primer (Tamiya fine surface) it came out looking like vanilla icecream, a most unmilitary shade which wasn't aesthetically acceptable until I'd filtered it with a wash and weathered it - it's the right-hand tank in this shot that's supposed to be RAL 8020 with RAL 7027 and it's even brighter in the flesh (the left hand tank is the earlier scheme RAL 8000 with RAL 7008, and all four shades are Mig. The models are 1/100)

The Mig is labelled RAL 8020 Gelbbraun MIG 0016. The Vallejo is labelled BRAUN RAL 8020 71.117 CAM BROWN. So I don't think either one is a highlight or a shadow shade. And it's hard to see that such a big difference could be accounted for by the manufacturer allowing for scale effect. The colour of the Vallejo RAL8020 is indeed very close to the Mig RAL8000 which I also have. I did wonder if they'd got mixed up somewhere along the way, but surely that would have been picked up and corrected very quickly?

Hi, hope the collective wisdom of BM can help here. I recently started painting a number of small scale Afrika Korps armoured vehicles. I've used Mig Ammo paints and done vehicles in the pre-1942 colours of RAL7008 on RAL8000, and the 1942 colours of RAL7027 on RAL8020. But I had some issues with the consistency of the Mig Ammo paints (my local model shop stocks only Mig and Tamiya) and thought I'd give Vallejo Model Air a go. So I ordered just one bottle of Model Air, the RAL8020. The problem is, the colour is very, very different from the Mig. Just to be clear, both bottles are actually labelled RAL 8020, I didn't get a closest match off a conversion chart or anything. The Mig is definitely yellow, it's a close match for artist's yellow ochre paint lightened with white. A thin coat on pale primer would be quite close to vanilla icecream. The Vallejo on the other hand, is definitely a brown, very close to a typical hot chocolate. I know that my camera and your screens can't accurately reproduce what I'm seeing, but this picture does show how different they are; So can anyone tell me what's going on here? I'm fairly new to researching and modelling this period and any advice gratefully received. I'm not bothered about absolute colour accuracy, not least because I know that desert conditions will really change any paint on the real world vehicle but these two colours are so different that I'm left very puzzled about what my models should look like.

See, now you've got me googling for a 1/100 scale Indy...

I like that a lot. The colour palette and the overall feel is very good, there's some nice details adding atmosphere, a bit of humour with the NPC. The only issue visible in the pictures is the quoins being split at the corner but I expect you knew that. I hope you use it for gaming, I think it would really being a lot to any table.