Where to Buy Special Paint Colors?

www.spruebrothers.com

www.redfroghobbies.com

are just two suppliers that have a selection of companies and paints.I'm sure everyone will chip in with their favorite supplier.

Depends on the hobby shop.  The better ones carry several lines of paint, with a good selection of each brand. If your LHS does not carry much paint, you may be forced to mail order.  Many places online make ordering quite easy.

There are two alternates for painting- one is to use the brand the instructions give info for- the other is to stick with one favorite brand (this often makes for a better paint job because you become more familiar with the ideosyncracies of that brand).  You then need to find paint color coversion charts online.  Folks here may help by recommending their favorite online conversion charts.  These charts show you what the name and stock number is for a given paint color.

Of course colors isn't the only thing. Weathering also comes into play in order for you to achieve the look you're looking for.

Revell's website has a conversion chart that gives color references for other manufacturers. It's a good place to start. For a more complicated but very thorough cross reference go to:

www.paint4models.com

You'll probably have to download the chart, I haven't been able to open it online for a couple years, but it's worth the effort.

The best prices and selection I've found for online paint ordering is Sprue Brothers, as mentioned, and Scalehobbyist.com

Welcome back to the hobby!

Mike

I sort of disagree with you all. Paint specifications in kits are really unreliable. First of all, in cases like Revell they'll be Revell paints. And then companies like Trumpeter make it up.

For a while the Stockholm charts were held as a standard, but from a lot of experience using them, they are best compromises, often involve mixing, and unless you have access to Humbrol, not very helpful. I see a lot of time wasted trying to get a chart match to something, only to find its a mismatch of a mismatch.

I think the best way is to work backwards from the real thing. Go online and do some searching. You will get a bunch of links to all of the various hobby forums out there, and a lot of discussion about what paints are considered the best matches for what projects.

Good luck, and "painted to look like the box" is not as important as "painted to look like the real thing".

I agree with GMorrison. Not all colors; for example, Olive Drab are the same. There are numerous shades of olive drabs out there. It's the same for greys, blues, greens, and such. It's a science to make the determination on what looks good enough for you.

I 100% agree with GMorrison.  For example, there are a lot of variations of the famous German Dark Yellow (Dunkelgelb) on factory-fresh vehicles.  What's more, lighting and weathering add even more variations.  As long as a color looks right to me, I'm happy with the result.

Roger that!  Don't get hung up on the color instructions with the kit.  Use what looks right to you, and mix some colors to suit as you go.  You will probably end up with something more accurate doing this, than by following the paint colors recommended in the instructions.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. If mixing, how can you match a color with a tiny box picture? Is there a place to get a swatch of a particular color?  Thanks again.  Tom

Color specifications show you only what the color looks like the day it is painted.  Modern paints (epoxy, acrylic, etc) do hold their color longer.  WW2 and earlier paints fade very rapidly when exposed to sunlight, so planes of that era are less critical to exact paint colors.  Also, in field conditions during war, when battle damage was repaired, crews likely used whatever they could get their hands on.  So one does not need to go overboard with period aircraft.