Revell ISS paint colors

Wilbur Wright wrote:

Hi Ron, Thanks ...so the ISS Artwork in the ISS gallery on the NASA webpage, that has the truss a grayish green (field gray) Is not accurate? Do you think they did that just for contrast in those computer generated art images?

Artist's rednerings are just that, renderings of whet the artist thinks he sees or wants you to see. They are seldom 100% correct in color and are as often as not are not even close. The alloy of the structural members after passivation looks greenish/grey in the normal lighting of assembly bays, which is often the cheap fluorescent tubes, some bays also use those nasty sodium "anti-crime" lights because they're supposed to eliminate hard shadows, then the alloy looks a funky orangey/brown.....take it outside in sunlight and it's a pretty much neutral metallic grey.

Hi Ron, Thanks ...so the ISS Artwork in the ISS gallery on the NASA webpage, that has the truss a grayish green (field gray) Is not accurate?

Do you think they did that just for contrast in those computer generated art images?

Well you'll also need some stray hairs, skin, blood and scale fingerprints of mine........that truss is probably just passivated aluminum since that's what most of the underlying structure was when it was built (mix a few drops of brown into Model Master Metallizer "stainless steel" to kill the blue and you're as close as you're going to get, "burnt metal" will also work but is a little light, not "burnt iron"....do not buff as the finish is pretty much flat). Your other choice is Alclad "dull aluminum" mixed 50:50 with "dark aluminum" then flat coat. The chrome isn't really chrome, it's aluminized mylar or metglass in some areas (Alclad chrome will look just right though). The white is white, very white. Any black structures are a special heat paint that is ultra flat and dead black (don't even touch it with bare hands or you're in deep kimchee). The yellow is insignia yellow.

Bit of trivia, all the wiring in the first Russian module was done in red, white and blue since it was wired in Washington, DC.

I tried to paste the link but it didn't work........Go to NASA website....then.....ISS website...........then searchable gallery.....then click on Hardware.........you will see some photos of main truss being built etc.
Pretty interesting stuff and great photos.

For the different variations of white, you could do several washes of different mixes of white with just a small amount of buff or something like that.  That would give some tones to the main color.  You can certainly weather that ISS a little bit cause it does weathers.  It catches all sorts of tiny particles and dust overtime.  The good thing is you have a certain degree of liberty.

I would like to see that picture of the main truss that looks white on earth cause I doubt that is the proper color.  Is it possible that it was some sort of coating or protective adhesive sheet like what covers sheets of plexiglass that could have been peeled off just before launch?

My model is not finished yet, I still have to repair the solar arrays and now that I know different techniques, I might jump in that build again and redo the painting.  Post some pictures whenever you can.

Thanks Yann. I will do that. I have seen some great photos of space shuttle models  that were built that look very real (the variations of white painting of them) I would like to know how that is achieved if you might know?

Also I have seen pictures of the Main truss while it was being loaded and it looks white on earth. I may paint it field gray to add contrast as in the NASA art / animation computer generated photos.

Thanks

Well, if you look at different pictures from NASA, the colors are different from one to another.  Colors and light doesn'T reflects the same in space, there is less pollutant and there is also a big contrast between the deep black space and a sun lighted area of the space station so cameras has a tendency to try to correct the contrasts and will fade the colors a bit.  Like the solar panels, they look different depending on what they reflects wether its the ocean (deep blue) or sun light (reflects of gold).  So paint it the way you feel since the only way to verify your choice is to go there.

For the white spots with black dots and yellow markings, I simply made them on a thin sticker sheet and applied them all along the modules.  The main problem is to place them corrctly.  There is so many of them and not enough pictures to locate them all so you'll have to improvise.  DO NOT expect to have an accurate version of the ISS since it's unfeasible because of the lack of info from NASA and lack of detail from the kit itself.  If you want a good start, take a look at a paper model of the ISS available fof free download and (marscenter.it) or something like that I'll have to verify.  You can use the flatten images of each module and print some part of them on decal paper to simulate some details.

Go there: http://www.marscenter.it/eng/default.asp

Click on Topics and then on Modeling and downlad the complete actual configuration of the ISS (not the final assembly)