Paint Mix.

[Paul_C]

Can anybody suggest a decent paint mix to achieve this particular shade of green please (as in first photo). It's a bit of a tricky one I know but as yet I haven't been able to get what I would close. Yesterday I mixed a couple of Tamiya acrylics (XF-4 & XF-21) which, once dried, has not come out too bad but maybe there is a better mix.

 

Paul.  

[ISW]

1 hour ago, Paul_C said:

Can anybody suggest a decent paint mix to achieve this particular shade of green please

Paul,

 

I imported the photo into my usual graphic / drawing package and inspected the colours of the building (it's not a single colour - I'm guessing its corrugated steel?). The 2 colours I found prominent were:

 

This is predominantly 'green', made up as follows:

 

In CMKY it registers as:

 

and:

 

This is predominantly 'cyan', made up as follows:

 

In CMKY it registers as:

 

I hope 'some' of the information above can help you reach a suitable 'recipe'.

 

Ian

[Paul_C]

Ian,

 

Thank you for such a brilliantly detailed response to my post. I'm just trying to pick the bones out of it but I'm not that great when it comes to technical matters, is it possible to simplify the content a bit please? Or putting it another way is it just a matter of mixing the two colours?

 

Paul.  

[cctransuk]

2 hours ago, ISW said:

Paul,

 

I imported the photo into my usual graphic / drawing package and inspected the colours of the building (it's not a single colour - I'm guessing its corrugated steel?). The 2 colours I found prominent were:

 

This is predominantly 'green', made up as follows:

 

In CMKY it registers as:

 

and:

 

This is predominantly 'cyan', made up as follows:

 

In CMKY it registers as:

 

I hope 'some' of the information above can help you reach a suitable 'recipe'.

 

Ian

 

The problem with CMYK analysis is that, in the modelling world, you can't get CMYK paints.

 

You can order rattle can paint using colour analysis results, but I don't think that was what the OP had in mind.

 

CJI.

[ikcdab]

To me, it looks as if you need to add a bit of blue to your green mix.  The shed in the photo looks distinctly blue.

Trouble is old film emulsions cannot be relied on.  Not only are you dependant on the light at the time of day the picture was taken, but also the changes in the emulsion over the years.

And if your original pic was from a book, then it's anybody's guess, the picture will have been through so much processing.

Ian

[Colin_McLeod]

4 hours ago, Paul_C said:

Can anybody suggest a decent paint mix to achieve this particular shade of green please (as in first photo). It's a bit of a tricky one I know but as yet I haven't been able to get what I would close. Yesterday I mixed a couple of Tamiya acrylics (XF-4 & XF-21) which, once dried, has not come out too bad but maybe there is a better mix.

 

Paul.  

 

 

I thought the OP wanted to match this colour, "(as in first photo)"

[cctransuk]

8 minutes ago, Colin_McLeod said:

 

I thought the OP wanted to match this colour, "(as in first photo)"

 

Errr, yes?

 

Not sure what your point is?

 

CJI.

[Colin_McLeod]

My point is that the colour in @ISW's post looks more like the colour of the model in the second photo, rather than the colour of the prototype shed in the first photo. A point also made by @ikcdab who suggests more blue is needed.

[ikcdab]

To be honest and to develop my post.. the picture of the shed was taken in particular light conditions at a certain time of day, maybe with the sun bring filtered through clouds.  It was then filtered through a lens and the film emulsion and processed by the local chemist.  It was then printed onto paper (maybe) and then has been scanned and post processed.  Maybe it's then been printed in a book and scanned again.. And post processed again.  Then it is being displayed on my phone screen with a particular pixel value matrix.  Then my phone has applied it's evening night cast..... So who knows what the original paint scheme of the shed is.....

Edited December 27, 2022 by ikcdab

[Enfys_Rainbow]

XF-21 mixed with white I'd say.

 

Matt

[The Johnster]

I think Paul OP is looking for an objective answer to a subjective problem.  Actual colours are a moveable feast when you consider the lighting conditions they are observed under, the vaguearies of photographic interpretation of them by camera, film, and printing, followed by digital reproduction and processing, the idiosyncracies of displaying them on different monitors (I am absolutely certain that the colour I'm seeing on my screen is not the same as the one you posted, Paul), the effect of gloss or matt paper on a printout, and differences in the way our individual eyes see it.  Just to add to the fun and games, colours, especially fairly bright ones like these, do not always scale down, so that the relatively small area of the model's surface looks different, usually darker, to the full size original, because of your eyes' response to the glare.  At least this is not a particularly intense or vivid colour; that would make matters worse!

 

I would use acrylic paint and pallette mix it freestyle; XF21 and white is a good starting point, but you may need to add hints of tints of blue, green, even yellow, and almost certainly light grey, and play with it until you think it looks close enough for jazz, repeating the process if you want to do more later.  Use matt paints to make assessing the colour of the mix easier.  Don't worry about the exact formula, just get as close as you can, and don't be afraid to scrap the pallette and start again if you 'overcook; it, as this will be easier and more likely to achieve the desired result than attempting to bring a wrong mix back into line.  

 

The difficulty with this 'mix it until it looks ok' approach is that it is impossible to state an exact moment at which to stop because any further improvements are getting harder to achieve because of the laws of diminishing returns; it is only possible to say with certainty that you need to do more to the mix if it's obviously not right, but impossible to say with certaintly what exact form of 'almost right' you need to suspend operations at before starting to go backwards. 

 

Once you've mixed a reasonable approximation, add other colours to it in small amounts so that the colour changes gradually, constantly referring to the source image until the difference is minimised.  This will be the best you can do, IMHO.  Save a swatch in case you want to reproduce the colour in future, and use it as a guide to the next mix.  Funnily enough I've just over the last few days used this exact procedure in an attempt to recreate the effect of the plain wooden planked unfitted open wagons built in early BR days, weathered a bit and with algae starting to infest them, but haven't bothered to save a swatch as no two of these wagons looked the same anyway.

 

 

[ISW]

2 hours ago, Paul_C said:

I'm just trying to pick the bones out of it but I'm not that great when it comes to technical matters, is it possible to simplify the content a bit please?

Paul,

 

Sorry for making life complicated. My intention was to simply help you 'zoom in' to the likely colour of the building. The 'local fill colour' in the charts show the colour and it's 'darkness'. The CMYK charts shows the primary colours you could make it from (if you had them). I only included it because the software provided it! I was aware that it was unlikely to be useful to the majority of people.

 

Hopefully, the insight has helped you identify that its a blue/green colour that looks almost 'grey'. You could use the swatches to check your paint 'recipe':

   

 

@The Johnster has provided (above) some good instructions on how this could be achieved.

 

Ian

 

 

[zarniwhoop]

It all depends on your personal interpretation of colours, and also on how your screen is set. To me, the shed in the original photo looks an almost-white shade of grey, with a hint of blue. To me, there is no green in sight except for the trees at the left and top left of the original picture. My screen is set so that it seems to give reasonable colour rendition without hurting my eyes when looking at white backgrounds. I've got a second tab of this thread opened beside this reply to quickly switch back and forth:  to me the green in the second photo helped me understand the question but looks nothing like the photo. Similarly, for me the grey samples @isw offered just above this reply are a lot darker than the main colour of the shed.

 

For the screen I'm using I found an online 'greyscale' image which has 13 shades from black to white - I cannot distinguish the two darkest or the two lightest, but all the others are distinct, so people who have calibrated their system might well see things differently from what I'm seeing.

 

Edit: I forgot to add that when my parents first got a colour TV a football match was on: I asked why the (real) grass of hte pitch looked blue - to them it looked green.

Edited December 27, 2022 by zarniwhoop
Add a final paragraph

[Nearholmer]

Yep, to me, my phone screen, my eyes, and my brain conspiring together, the colour of the building in the photo looks like faded “duck egg blue” (to use BS 4800 paint colour language), whereas the colour scheme of the model looks like “duck egg green” (BS 216 paint colour). Goodness alone knows what colour it actually is!

 

Did the building belong to an organisation with a “house colour”?

 

 

Vallejo sell a “Battle of Britain” set of colours that includes both, but I’m sure it costs a fortune!

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by Nearholmer

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

 

 

Edit: I forgot to add that when my parents first got a colour TV a football match was on: I asked why the (real) grass of hte pitch looked blue - to them it looked green.

 

Interesting.  I read somewhere many years ago that archeological evidence from the Classical Greek era shows that they often painted green things blue and vice versa, blue grass and green sky.  It had been thought for many years that this was due to the deteriation of the colours over time, but modern chemical analysis of paint remnants showed that the colours were as painted albeit faded.  The assumption is that blue/green colour blindness was endemic in Classical Greek society.  Not suggesting that your parents were ancient Greeks, of course...

 

When I started on the railway, I was given a medical including a fairly serious colour blindness test.  I knew little of the subject, but apparently there is type of the condition that tends to reduce reds, yellows, and greens to browns for some people, an obvious issue when it came to reading signals.  We had 3 seconds to identify tiny dim coloured dots for these colours on a black background to simulate oil lamp signal colours from a mile distance in clear weather, and 100% accuracy was required IIRC.  I had little problem with it, but it certainly required concentration!  Real signals were, I found, a little easier to see and identify colours, and of course MAS and searchlight distant signals could be identified from very considerable distances.

 

[zarniwhoop]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

 

Interesting.  I read somewhere many years ago that archeological evidence from the Classical Greek era shows that they often painted green things blue and vice versa, blue grass and green sky.  It had been thought for many years that this was due to the deteriation of the colours over time, but modern chemical analysis of paint remnants showed that the colours were as painted albeit faded.  The assumption is that blue/green colour blindness was endemic in Classical Greek society.  Not suggesting that your parents were ancient Greeks, of course...

I'm not talking about colour blindness, but about the point at which an individual decides that a shade (e.g. somewhere in the cyans) is blue or green. I can tell blue from green. Oh, and in Scots Gaelic the colour of grass is 'gorm' (blue).

[Paul_C]

Further to my original post I found these photos amongst my files this morning.

 

Paul.

[ISW]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Vallejo sell a “Battle of Britain” set of colours that includes both, but I’m sure it costs a fortune!

If (?) you can find them separately, Vallejo paints are £2.55 each in my local Boyes.

 

Ian

[PMP]

Take the section you want to match to one of the diy stores that does paint matching. You’ll likely find in one f the quality ranges a very close match, then get a tester pot made up the that colour. Use Halfords acrylic Matt white as your undercoat and apply the matched paint as top coat.

 

[Kylestrome]

11 minutes ago, PMP said:

Take the section you want to match to one of the diy stores that does paint matching. You’ll likely find in one f the quality ranges a very close match, then get a tester pot made up the that colour. Use Halfords acrylic Matt white as your undercoat and apply the matched paint as top coat.

 

And by the time you've weathered it all to match the photos, you'll be wondering why you made such a great effort to get the colour 'just right'* in the first place! 😉

 

David

 

*Unless you want the building to appear brand new?

Edited December 29, 2022 by Kylestrome

[PMP]

^^^ Wot he just said! ^^^^

[Suffolk Dave]

Seeing that you live in Norfolk my advice would be to get yourself down to Great Eastern Models in Norwich. I believe they sell Vallejo Model Color paints. In that range you'll find something akin to the colour you need and if you can't find a close match, you'll find other colours that you could be mixed to get to where you need to be. 

 

I'm not a major investor in either the shop or Vallejo - though the shop must be the friendliest model railway shop out there! 

[Paul_C]

Cheers for that Dave, I go into the city a couple times a week so I can call in there on the way home. I'm going over to Cromer today to get some Tamiya paints as I almost cracked it with the mix that I did last week. Matt suggested XF-21 as well as XF-23 mixed with white so I'll give that a go. Like all things I'm open to suggestions and more than willing to give it a go.

 

Attached are some more photos, these were sent to me by another member of this forum but I wanted to clear it with him first before posting them.

 

Paul.

[ISW]

56 minutes ago, Paul_C said:

Attached are some more photos,

Paul,

 

So the building ends are galvanised corrugated steel, and the sides corrugated asbestos (?) sheeting.

 

No wonder the colour of the ends was a grey / green / blue. The reflections make it a multitude of colours.

 

Ian

[Fat Controller]

1 hour ago, ISW said:

Paul,

 

So the building ends are galvanised corrugated steel, and the sides corrugated asbestos (?) sheeting.

 

No wonder the colour of the ends was a grey / green / blue. The reflections make it a multitude of colours.

 

Ian

It was probably in Bowater's house colour (a mid-blue, IIRC) when new, about 50+ years ago . I believe the building was constructed for the block train of clay slurry tanks rom Cornwall