HMS Iron Duke colours 1919

[CTDavies]

Hello All,

I‘m interested in building an interwar HMS Iron Duke in light paintwork (Mediterranean colours) when she was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet in ca. 1919. Can anyone tell me what Colour that was, and maybe which paint company makes it these days? Thanks,

Chris

[JosephLalor]

Sovereign hobbies expect to have two light greys available, NARN05 Light Grey 507B and NARN06 Very Light Grey 507C, both tor the period from 1916 to the late 1920s.  I imagine that the latter will be for ships on the Med stations.

[CTDavies]

Thanks for that information, Joseph.

I‘ve been to the Sovereign Hobbies website, to check their colours and wow! Would I have tone that Colour down? There are a few pictures of Iron Duke class battleships in the Mediterranean Fleet and they look almost white. 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I would strongly advise against trying to "scale" colours but I am not a subscriber to that school of thought. If you do like to imagine models as miniature real ships viewed from far away and you have a disruptive pattern camouflage that would be starting to merge in real life, I still wouldn't ruin the base colours (and the overwhelming majority who think they know what they're doing make a proper mess of it) but rather would filter the ship overall so that all the colours got exactly the same treatment thus preserving their relative positions in terms of tone. Tone is very, very difficult to judge. Humans are terrible at it in fact.

 

Nevertheless, if you will ever view your model in direct sunlight like the reference photos were, the colours do look right without fiddling with them. This is our NARN22, a 45% RF grey which also looks very light in many photos - unless you spot an Ensign flapping in the breeze or a sailor wearing white juxtaposed next to the paintwork.

 

The RGB renders on the webstore will tend to make dark colours look lighter and lighter colours look darker.