SEA/Vietnam camouflage paint. Which brand?

[quangster]

Hi all,

I'm currently building the Kitty Hawk 1/48 RF-101C and approaching the painting stage. You can read about it HERE

 

My jntention is to represent an a/c operating in Vietnam circa 1967 just after the introduction of the so-called SEA camouflage.

In many photographs of the period, the colours appeared worn and faded, especially the tan. Is there any brand of hobby paint which incidentally replicates the faded version of the Vietnam colours?

 

Also, which brand are you using for SEA camouflage and why?

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Cheers,

Quang

[Ben Brown]

Years ago, I preferred Xtracolor because it was a little lighter than Model Master or Gunze, especially the tan. Model Master is supposedly a good match for the FS color chips. Gunze/Mr Color look good to my eye, too. I’ve switched to Mr Color, now that I can more easily get it here in the USA. I like the way it sprays and dries quickly. I probably never would’ve quit using Xtracolor if it was still available here. The only negative was the drying time, which could be sped up considerably with Mr Leveling Thinner.

 

The sun faded the paint so quickly over there, you’d probably do better by choosing your favorite paint brand and adding a little white to fade it. Then go back with your preferred weathering techniques. 

 

Ben

[quangster]

 

The issue with the camouflage in Vietnam is that the paints faded at different rates depending on the colours. Furthermore the hues shifted under the harsh sunlight, tan becoming less pink and greens veering to olive. It’s not something that can be resolved by merely adding white to the paint.

Anyway thank you Ben for your input. It’ll help me choose my paints when the time comes.

 

Cheers,

Quang

[Des]

I usually prefer pristine over weathered finishes and it may just have been a bad batch of paints but for my last attempt at a Vietnam period aircraft I brush painted using Humbrol Acrylics rather than Enamels and despite several coats the end result for all of the colours used was rather patchy and faded very much like the real aircraft towards the end of its service.

[RidgeRunner]

14 hours ago, quangster said:

Hi all,

I'm currently building the Kitty Hawk 1/48 RF-101C and approaching the painting stage. You can read about it HERE

 

My jntention is to represent an a/c operating in Vietnam circa 1967 just after the introduction of the so-called SEA camouflage.

In many photographs of the period, the colours appeared worn and faded, especially the tan. Is there any brand of hobby paint which incidentally replicates the faded version of the Vietnam colours?

 

Also, which brand are you using for SEA camouflage and why?

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Cheers,

Quang

Hi Q!

 

As an enamels user I generally use Humbrol but have switched partially to Colourcoats, particularly when it came to my recent Thud (59-1749 "Mr Toad"). The paint goes on like silk. If you then want to "weather" it, such as fading, you could give the model varying oversprays of extremely weak white to give a faded effect. I don't, satifying myself with a little panel liing and a few swipes of Tamiya Weathering sticks here and there. Having said all that I am no expert. I'm sure others here will have better advice!

 

Martin

 

Edited April 30, 2019 by RidgeRunner

[RidgeRunner]

14 hours ago, Ben Brown said:

The sun faded the paint so quickly over there, you’d probably do better by choosing your favorite paint brand and adding a little white to fade it. Then go back with your preferred weathering techniques. 

Yep, that too!

 

 

Martin

 

[Giorgio N]

12 hours ago, quangster said:

 

The issue with the camouflage in Vietnam is that the paints faded at different rates depending on the colours. Furthermore the hues shifted under the harsh sunlight, tan becoming less pink and greens veering to olive. It’s not something that can be resolved by merely adding white to the paint.

Anyway thank you Ben for your input. It’ll help me choose my paints when the time comes.

 

Cheers,

Quang

 

The fact that paint faded at different rates and weathered quickly is also something that prevents a single paint from giving an accurate result.

Best is IMHO to start from a paint close to the proper FS colour and modify this to match the faded appearance. I agree that white would not work, as adding this to the 30219 Tan would make the one even more pink, Best would be to lighten using a very light green, as the green would reduce the red effect.

[Ben Brown]

@Giorgio N: Thanks for the good info! I’m not very expert with fading paint. I’ll save it for a future heavily weathered F-100 I hope to eventually build.

 

Ben

[quangster]

11 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

I agree that white would not work, as adding this to the 30219 Tan would make the one even more pink, Best would be to lighten using a very light green, as the green would reduce the red effect.

Exactly. And start playing with washes and filters. Now where's my colour wheel?

[quangster]

Contrary to general belief, adding white would only 'grey' the colour i.e. the green would not be lighter but would lose its 'greeness' instead.

OK guys, now we are entering the arcanes of colour theory. I don't think we'd need to open another Pandora box 🤐

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

7 minutes ago, quangster said:

Contrary to general belief, adding white would only 'grey' the colour i.e. the green would not be lighter but would lose its 'greeness' instead.

OK guys, now we are entering the arcanes of colour theory. I don't think we'd need to open another Pandora box 🤐

Not quite, it will get lighter too. It has to. If you add an 80% LRV paint (white) to a 15% LRV paint (e.g. a medium/dark olive), the result cannot still be a 15% paint.

[quangster]

2 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Not quite, it will get lighter too. It has to. If you add an 80% LRV paint (white) to a 15% LRV paint (e.g. a medium/dark olive), the result cannot still be a 15% paint.

Nah, it would get whiter. For the same reason that when you add white to red, you don't get light red but pink.

[Trenton guy]

Back in 1966 and 1967, I made a series of Vietnam based aircraft, F-105, RF-101, F-100, F-102 and  an F-4 using the then new Hasegawa kits. Ready mixed colors were still in the future so I mixed my own to match photo’s and FS numbers ten available. I was very pleased with the results and those homemade matches have stood up well to the many “authentics” which have followed over the decades. Then, in March 1968, I arrived at Pleiku Air Force Base to begin my year of service in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. Imagine my shock when I saw the USAF aircraft that were based there (mostly Skyraiders and various type of C-47). The Air Force had not gotten the memo. The colors were all wrong, unlike my matches or any “authentic “ I have seen since. The tan (FS30219) was distinctly pink and the lighter green (FS32102) was light and distinctly blue green. The dark green was true to my match and toes of the later “authentics”. Now, there were no hangers at Pleiku AFB so the tropical sun had undoubtedly done its work and the effect was quite pronounced and unlike any thing I have yet seen on a model. I’ve never built another Viet Nam aircraft.

[Muzz]

I’ve recently painted a Phantom in the SEA scheme using Hataka Orange line, nice paints to use and the camo colours look right, the only issue I have with them is I believe the light grey they provide for the underside is too grey and not light enough. I bought their box set of paints which came with a couple of different shades of Tan so was handy for fading.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

10 hours ago, quangster said:

Nah, it would get whiter. For the same reason that when you add white to red, you don't get light red but pink.

 

If you try to consider colour as per CIELAB colourspace you will begin to consider lightness and saturation as entirely separate attributes.

 

Pink is just a low saturation red. Lower saturation is closer to colour-neutrality. White is an absolute though. Adding white to anything other than white reduces its saturation and increases its lightness.

 

You said adding white doesn't make a colour lighter. That's factually incorrect, I'm afraid.

[Nikolay Polyakov]

For the future builds I bought this set: USAF TAC SOUTH EAST ASIA (SEA) SCHEME from AK-Interactive. I don’t used it yet, but I think it would be interesting to try something new. Anyway, I’m not an artist and will do a factory-fresh airframes. And using the white paint to «fade» the colors is a very reasonable idea.

 

Cheers! 🙂

[quangster]

@Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies I said it, didn't I? Pandora box!

The problem with discussions about colours is that nobody agrees with the terms: saturation, hue, tint, depth, intensity,...

So it'd be wiser if we leave it as 'tis.

 

@Muzz I heard good things about the new Hataka line, but haven't tried it yet. Thanks for your input.

 

@Trenton guy As modellers, we're trying to make our models as close to reality as possible.

But the artist in us just wants to see what's actually in our mind's eye. This is what makes this hobby so special.

 

@Nikolay Polyakov It would be interesting to see how different the AK's interpretation is from the other manufacturers'. 🤔

 

Cheers,

Quang

[Nikolay Polyakov]

9 minutes ago, quangster said:

 @Nikolay Polyakov It would be interesting to see how different the AK's interpretation is from the other manufacturers'. 🤔

I think it’s doesn’t matter after that:

8 hours ago, Trenton guy said:

The colors were all wrong, unlike my matches or any “authentic “ I have seen since. The tan (FS30219) was distinctly pink and the lighter green (FS32102) was light and distinctly blue green. The dark green was true to my match and toes of the later “authentics”. Now, there were no hangers at Pleiku AFB so the tropical sun had undoubtedly done its work and the effect was quite pronounced and unlike any thing I have yet seen on a model.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, quangster said:

@Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies I said it, didn't I? Pandora box!

The problem with discussions about colours is that nobody agrees with the terms: saturation, hue, tint, depth, intensity,...

So it'd be wiser if we leave it as 'tis.

 

@Muzz I heard good things about the new Hataka line, but haven't tried it yet. Thanks for your input.

 

@Trenton guy As modellers, we're trying to make our models as close to reality as possible.

But the artist in us just wants to see what's actually in our mind's eye. This is what makes this hobby so special.

 

@Nikolay Polyakov It would be interesting to see how different the AK's interpretation is from the other manufacturers'. 🤔

 

Cheers,

Quang

 

That seems a bit defeatest. What's easier is to state which industry-recognised set of terms is being used.

[quangster]

It's not defeatism, but realism.

As a former illustrator, I know how difficult a dialog between a graphic artist and a printer can be. We use the same terms but mean different things.

The confusion comes from the fact that the artist sees colour as perceived light while the technician views it as pigment. Mixing pigments yields different results than mixing light.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. i can go on and on but this is well beyond the scope of this thread.

 

Cheers,

Quang

[fubar57]

Vallejo makes a set though I haven't seen the colours up close yet

 

[bentwaters81tfw]

One of our club members used to paint F-4s in the SEA scheme, and later in Euro one. He did this for a living in the paint barns for USAFE at Mildenhall and Lakenheath. Much to our surprise, he informed us that they would start by painting the entire airframe in the darkest colour, then add the camo in the increasingly lighter shades, ending with the tan for SEA or the lighter green for Euro 1.

Taking pigments or light fade aside, this is borne out by the figure painters in our club. They always start with the dark colours, and overpaint with lighter tones. While you are not painting a large airframe with a spraygun, or a 54mm figure with a two haired brush, the method is identical.

Totally AAF to how I was taught to paint, but it works.

We used this technique when repainting our 1/1 A-10 in Euro 1. After it weathered in, it now looks just right. Weird.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, quangster said:

It's not defeatism, but realism.

As a former illustrator, I know how difficult a dialog between a graphic artist and a printer can be. We use the same terms but mean different things.

The confusion comes from the fact that the artist sees colour as perceived light while the technician views it as pigment. Mixing pigments yields different results than mixing light.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. i can go on and on but this is well beyond the scope of this thread.

 

Cheers,

Quang

Paint company here - but what would we know about colour matching and communicating between ourselves? 😂

 

Nobody mixes light to paint anything - so it's all pigments in practise.

 

Anyway, enjoy your model - I have a plane to catch...

[quangster]

2 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Nobody mixes light to paint anything - so it's all pigments in practise.

This is exactly where the misunderstanding starts.

Coulour is nothing than light reflecting on a surface with a certain vibration (frequency). It’s that particular frequency that makes the surface appear to our eyes as ‘red’, ‘blue’ or whatever. Without light i.e. in stark darkness, there would be no colour.

Paint manufacturers try to reproduce that effect using pigments coming from ingredients found in nature like earth or plant extracts. 

We are talking about two different things.

2 hours ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

One of our club members used to paint F-4s in the SEA scheme, and later in Euro one. He did this for a living in the paint barns for USAFE at Mildenhall and Lakenheath. Much to our surprise, he informed us that they would start by painting the entire airframe in the darkest colour, then add the camo in the increasingly lighter shades, ending with the tan for SEA or the lighter green for Euro 1.

Taking pigments or light fade aside, this is borne out by the figure painters in our club. They always start with the dark colours, and overpaint with lighter tones. While you are not painting a large airframe with a spraygun, or a 54mm figure with a two haired brush, the method is identical.

Totally AAF to how I was taught to paint, but it works.

We used this technique when repainting our 1/1 A-10 in Euro 1. After it weathered in, it now looks just right. Weird.

It’s not as weird as one thinks.

The dark colour acts as a strong foundation to the lighter, subsequent coats. The pigments of the lighter coat would appear ‘stronger’ against a darker base.

Also the base colour interacts with the top coat. To get a rich, warm red, try using a yellow base.

Edited May 1, 2019 by quangster

[stevehnz]

52 minutes ago, quangster said:

Coulour is nothing than light reflecting on a surface with a certain vibration (frequency). It’s that particular frequency that makes the surface appear to our eyes as ‘red’, ‘blue’ or whatever. Without light i.e. in stark darkness, there would be no colour.

I think lecturing someone as knowledgeable as Jamie in such basic terms is borderline insulting. From your initial post asking for help in a way that was going to be difficult to answer with any authority given the variations inherent in the topic of how to replicate weathering & fading. Nevertheless, several members tried,but it seemed in fact you had your own agenda that you then wished to thrust back upon your audience. To me, this is disingenuous at best & I believe little of any use can be served by continuing in this direction so I would suggest desisting least folk begin to suspect there be trolling at work. Just saying. 

Steve.