RAF Dark Earth

[Ngantek]

2 hours ago, Casey said:

 

Which one do you plan to build,  (if I understood, using Tamiya)? I could try same model.

To be honest, the bulk of my stash (and frankly interest) is Fleet Air Arm, so for the time being, I'm mostly interested in finding good mixes for EDSG, Sky and the occasional dark slate grey for TSS since they'll get used a lot. No doubt I'll be using others (particularly day fighter scheme) in the future. I'm still only just getting started so frankly every build is likely to use different paints or varnishes or techniques to find what I like. I've recently done a little side build in TSS using humbrol enamels (and the colours look good to my eye, so that will be a good comparison) but nostalgia aside, I've much preferred using Tamiya acrylics thus far, with the corresponding issue of lack of western theatre paint matches. 

 

The next build is likely to be a Sea Vixen (EDSG/white) or a Seafire 47 (high line EDSG/sky). I also wanted to do a comparison between humbrol 123, your mix and the oft-quoted Roy Sutherland mix for EDSG, but tbh, it will come down to my aesthetic preference over realism. I always thought it was a Dark blue before I got into this modelling lark. Anyway sorry to highjack the thread!

[Steben]

Check this one out. Great work from Casey.

RAF002 - Dark Earth - Flat
    Suggested using total of 10 parts (DE00: 0.34)
        XF-4 - Yellow Green: 4
        XF-10 - Flat Brown: 5
        XF-12 - J.N. Grey: 1

[Casey]

6 hours ago, Steben said:

Check this one out. Great work from Casey.

RAF002 - Dark Earth - Flat
    Suggested using total of 10 parts (DE00: 0.34)
        XF-4 - Yellow Green: 4
        XF-10 - Flat Brown: 5
        XF-12 - J.N. Grey: 1

 

And here is what you will get. The mix on the left is Golden Acrylics + 1:1 Matt Medium from the 'closer match' mix recipes, the mix on the right is the 'professionally eyeballed' Tamiya mix from the recipe above. Spectrophotometer says the mix on the left is a bit closer match.

 

[JackG]

@Casey is that Golden Acrylics mix using their virtual online mixer?   It does look the best out of the three, but digitally still a ways from Mr. Millman's studies.

https://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer

 

 

 

 

 

regards,

Jack

[brinjal]

The golden paints above look great! Shame i dont have this paint locally. And another point is, unless I mix this special blend in a separate bottle, its hard to mix so many parts because i cant finish the paints. And then if i do dark earth first, i most likely will need to touch up a bit, and its impossible to mix the absolute correct color again.

 

Anyway, i was inspired by the khaki mix in one of the threads. So i played around a bit with the online color mix. Using tamiya acrylics, color numbers are from online.

 

The one circled in red is the dark earth from the RAF museum book soft copy. Obviously, monitor and the copy of the book that i found plays a huge role, but what im trying to do here is just to be in the envelope of the said color, as discussed in another thread.

 

 

This was the one i settled on. 2 parts of flat earth and 1 part of cockpit green. But in practice, i probably mixed too much cockpit green. 

 

 

This second picture is a result of suggestion from my girlfriend who had a bit of art background. 5 parts of flat earth with 1 part of cockpit green and raf dark green (XF81).

 

I'll post up a picture of my handpainted spit when i'm done, but im quite satisfied with the early results, 2:1 flatearth cockpit green for dark earth, and XF81 for dark green. 

[JackG]

@brinjal - actually your girlfriend's suggestion (the one circled in red 113,88,58) is extremely close to Nick Millman's reading, such that it really doesn't need anymore fiddling with.  Most definitely in the acceptable range.

 

 

regards,

Jack

[Whitewolf]

On 29/12/2012 at 23:41, Brad said:

Gunze 72 works well for me.

Yep, the Gunze/Mr Hobby colours are very good. They do RAF colour sets for differing time periods, highly recommend them!

[Casey]

4 hours ago, JackG said:

@Casey is that Golden Acrylics mix using their virtual online mixer?   It does look the best out of the three, but digitally still a ways from Mr. Millman's studies.

https://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer

regards,

Jack

 

I use my own math.

 

Pictures above are the real life mixes made with real life paints.

 

And here are the raw spectrophotometer readouts of those with a comparison to the paint samples I've measured from British Aviation Colours of World War Two book:

 

My Tamiya mix:

 

My Golden Fluid "economy" recipe (Ultramarine Violet:8, Yellow Ochre: 7):

 

And my Golden Fluid "Suggested" recipe (Raw Sienna: 8, Titanium White: 2, Bone Black: 6, Burnt Sienna: 6, Hansa Yellow Opaque: 1).

 

Golden mixer was a fun tool for a while but I found its results to be too far off for my personal comfort.

 

Better results were given by Paintmaker mixer (https://sensuallogic.com/paintmaker) but it is not free and is still tied down to the RGB color space.

 

The linear RGB/CMY color space mixers like the trycolors one used by @brinjal are not representing paint mixing behavior correctly. I know enough about RGB now to never trust an RGB triplet (and its CMY derivative neither). The only exception I am aware of is Mixbox (https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/painter/) but it is because it transforms RGB color space to K/S (Absorption/Scattering) internally. I wonder if someone could make an more realistic version of trycolors using that algorithm... (hint hint)

Edited April 24, 2022 by Casey

[Steben]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

 

I use my own math.

 

Pictures above are the real life mixes made with real life paints.

 

And here are the raw spectrophotometer readouts of those with a comparison to the paint samples I've measured from British Aviation Colours of World War Two book:

 

My Tamiya mix:

 

My Golden Fluid "economy" recipe (Ultramarine Violet:8, Yellow Ochre: 7):

 

And my Golden Fluid "Suggested" recipe (Raw Sienna: 8, Titanium White: 2, Bone Black: 6, Burnt Sienna: 6, Hansa Yellow Opaque: 1).

 

Golden mixer was a fun tool for a while but I found its results to be too far off for my personal comfort.

 

Better results were given by Paintmaker mixer (https://sensuallogic.com/paintmaker) but it is not free and is still tied down to the RGB color space.

 

The linear RGB/CMY color space mixers like the trycolors one used by @brinjal are not representing paint mixing behavior correctly. I know enough about RGB now to never trust an RGB triplet (and its CMY derivative neither). The only exception I am aware of is Mixbox (https://scrtwpns.com/mixbox/painter/) but it is because it transforms RGB color space to K/S (Absorption/Scattering) internally. I wonder if someone could make an more realistic version of trycolors using that algorithm... (hint hint)

Me mucha like these posts....
Are these spectral curves generated?

[Casey]

1 minute ago, Steben said:

Me mucha like these posts....
Are these spectral curves generated?

Yes, by spectrophotometer

 

Those are real measurements.

[Casey]

As a fun Sunday exercise - here is a tool I use for "Professional Eyeballing" when I am not in the mood of figuring out how to dose 0.01g of viscous pigment onto a microtiter plate:

 

 

This is basically a transparent plastic card with the guide printed on its back. You use it directly - by applying the paint onto it.

 

Since it is a clear plastic, acrylic can be wiped out of it with a wet cloth.

 

It was added as a freebie for 1500 Color Mixing Recipes for Oil/Acrylic/Watercolor by William F. Powell book.

 

Here is the (since we are still in the topic) my Golden recipe for RAF Dark Earth:

I've added 'precise enough blobs' of paint by volume, assuming same paints density - from left to right: Raw Sienna: 8, Titanium White: 2, Bone Black: 6, Burnt Sienna: 6, Hansa Yellow Opaque: 1.

 

Mixed it up with painting knife, moved to a drawdown card, let it dry and scanned with reference color:

 

 

And here is the spectrophotometer readout of the result:

 

 

Edited April 24, 2022 by Casey

[brinjal]

14 hours ago, Casey said:

The linear RGB/CMY color space mixers like the trycolors one used by @brinjal are not representing paint mixing behavior correctly. 

Yes. Im certainly aware of the shortcomings of RGB. And yeah, the paint mixing behavior is also something in my mind. If I were to mix a special blend in a separate jar using different tamiya acrylics, and i stir it long enough after mixing to look homogenous, will some of the individual pigment still doesnt blend in well, like a stream of chocolate in between vanilla chocolate ice-cream? or some pigments are lighter and therefore stays on top of the others? 

[Ed Russell]

20 hours ago, brinjal said:

monitor and the copy of the book that (I) found

Monitor - yes, copy of book - probably not. We looked at six copies and the colour chips were a Grade 1 match.

[Casey]

3 hours ago, Ed Russell said:

Monitor - yes, copy of book - probably not. We looked at six copies and the colour chips were a Grade 1 match.

That's exactly why I am using them as reference material

 

My idea was: if I was to reproduce, say, FS30279, I better get the reference from real FS595 chip for my measurements, and even then use something else than my eyes in random light conditions for that.

[JackG]

Does anyone know if the paint samples in the British Aviation Colours book were based on chips created from paint stores, or are they copies of the swatches of official standard examples sent to paint manufactures?    Reason I ask is because the digital sample posted from the book is discernibly more red than Nick Millman's findings.   His readings are from original MAP swatches, but maybe they have aged or there is always the human element that makes the difference...

 

 

regards,

Jack

 

[Casey]

7 hours ago, brinjal said:

Yes. Im certainly aware of the shortcomings of RGB. And yeah, the paint mixing behavior is also something in my mind. If I were to mix a special blend in a separate jar using different tamiya acrylics, and i stir it long enough after mixing to look homogenous, will some of the individual pigment still doesnt blend in well, like a stream of chocolate in between vanilla chocolate ice-cream? or some pigments are lighter and therefore stays on top of the others? 

This would be a very, very long topic idea to explain the physics of paint in general...

 

Pigments do migrate through liquid medium due to difference in their dentisty, you can see it in almost all fluid paint mixtures that are left aside for a while. I do indeed have some paints that do look like chocolate layer under ice cream of white acrylic binder...

[Rolls-Royce]

1 hour ago, JackG said:

Does anyone know if the paint samples in the British Aviation Colours book were based on chips created from paint stores, or are they copies of the swatches of official standard examples sent to paint manufactures?    Reason I ask is because the digital sample posted from the book is discernibly more red than Nick Millman's findings.   His readings are from original MAP swatches, but maybe they have aged or there is always the human element that makes the difference...

 

 

regards,

Jack

 

Even if they were based on the same samples Nick used, given the time of the book's original printing (1976), there are several possibilites:

1. Sufficient time has elapsed for age-related drift in the reference samples between viewings.

2. The mixes for the book were matched by eye, not by spectrophotometer, which in the 1970s would have been very large desktop instruments more suited for laboratories, and correspondingly scarce and expensive.

3. Inter-instrument and inter-session variation, even if the authors of the book and Nick Millman had used the same make and model of spectrophotometer, which I think would be highly unlikely. I've personally seen small differences in two readings of the same chip taken with the exact same instrument at two different times. 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Rolls-Royce

[Casey]

14 minutes ago, JackG said:

...there is always the human element that makes the difference...

Thats exactly why I use spectrophotometer (actually a couple of them). There is even a machine error element if it comes to the precise measurements.  The question is: how much it is going to affect my modelling experience if I apply pre-shading, post-shading, washes, chipping, and then dust it all with my eyeshadow to simulate dirt...

 

Sometimes, it is almost a history lesson. Let me give you an example of my personal research of how to reproduce Aotake color. This is not historically accurate and just represents my thought process.

 

What I know:

1. The paint was actually an transparent enamel layer applied over a metal to protect it from elements.
2. I have no clue of its composition but I know there were blue and green variations of it
3. I have some small amount of samples from Japanese paint chip books in my hand
4. I saw photos from various sources
5. I know that aotakeiro literally means blue-green, malachite green, color of green bamboo

I tried to think as an japanese engineer who just created a protective coat and was about to make sure that people see that this coat is applied properly. I assumed the original coat either had the color as its key component or was transparent and had to have the pigment added.

 

I also noticed that colors looked suspiciously close to this:

 

This is an art from Hokusai series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" - the Number 30 "Shichiri beach". The artist was known for popularizing use of prussian blue as a new dye.

 

Prussian blue is also a dye used for engineering blueprints, so I had this "aha!" moment then. How about: add bit of prussian blue to transparent enamel and see how it works?

 

I had some issues because the prussian blue dye is not available for acrylic paints (the pigment is sensitive to the acrylic binder alkalinity), so I had to use other pigments to reproduce it.

 

Now the green version - the greens are visible on the painting above and made from prussian blue. with some extra brownish dye, which looked like very diluted red iron oxide to me with maybe some raw sienna.

 

I played around with those basic colors and here is what I achieved so far:

 

Blue aotake: Prussian blue glaze over silver metallic.

Green aotake: Prussian blue equivalent + sap green mixture equivalent of red iron oxide, nickel azo yellow, phthalo green and lamp black, painted over same silver metallic surface.

 

 

The samples on the left are the ones from Camouflage and Markings of Imperial Japanese Navy Bombers in WWII.

 

 

[Meatbox8]

Humbrol 29 Dark Earth is, to my eye, too dark in its current form

[fishplanebeer]

As an enamel user I have a tin of Dark Earth from Colourcoats which I've yet to use but has anyone tried it as generally I've found this brand to be spot on?

 

My next project will be Spitfire IIa P7666 when with 54 squadron (KL+Z) so any advice would be much appreciated in advance.

 

Regards

Colin.

Edited April 26, 2022 by fishplanebeer

[Rolls-Royce]

21 hours ago, fishplanebeer said:

As an enamel user I have a tin of Dark Earth from Colourcoats which I've yet to use but has anyone tried it as generally I've found this brand to be spot on?

 

My next project will be Spitfire IIa P7666 when with 54 squadron (KL+Z) so any advice would be much appreciated in advance.

 

Regards

Colin.

You are good to go, Colin. I just measured a brushed-out patch of Colourcoats Dark Earth against the RAF Museum book chip, and it was a very good match at a dE of 1.67. sRGB 108 89 61 for the paint vs 112 93 66 for the chip. Just slightly darker...

Edited April 27, 2022 by Rolls-Royce

[128fiddler]

I'd like to revive this thread with the question if someone has tried where the MRP 108 Dark Earth situates itself compared to the book color chips. 

 

my question comes from trying an unused Xtracolor X2 and X1 on a piece of paper, both being hidiously dark to my eye. On top of that, the wind pulled my paper up, knocking the full jar of DE empty... I now have to resupply myself with better options. Paints from the UK seem to be more and more difficult to come by which rules the colourcotes out. Therefor I would love to look out for ranges available here in Europe/BE. 

So I recently bought a few bottles of MRP after reading lots of positive things. So has anyone used them for Dark Earth/Dark Green camo? Then, on a sidenote, their color examples used to visualize their paints online makes it look like if their 145 dark earth/field drab FS30118 is very close too and to my eye maybe even closer. I must say I'm a total rookie on this matter and have no referrnce to use except some pictures from warbirds like the Peter Vacher Hurri.  So is there anyone who can shed a light on this matter? Own experience or anything? Thanks in advance!

Edited August 23, 2023 by 128fiddler

[Seawinder]

FWIW I've used MRP 108 on a couple of projects and like the way it looks.

[Tomas Enerdal]

Colourcotes can be bought from Denmark. Check sovereigns list of retailers. 

[Ratch]

On 23/08/2023 at 22:43, 128fiddler said:

both being hidiously dark to my ey

I had that years ago and promptly threw it away