Hi There ;
I have a question for you . Do you know what Scale Effect is ? It's kind of Mysterious . Scale Effect is that which renders the model to the eye correctly.In The right coloration for the object .
A good for instance - Painting the U.S.S.England in 1/350 . I made the serious mistake of NOT taking scale effect into consideration .She's a great shade of Testors Dark Sea Blue . Put her on a dark surface and she disappears ! Yup , really .She has been almost leaned on or had files dropped on top of her .
Result , She's been put in my Secure case which is a Doctor's File Cabinet .You know , the ones with windowed doors that lift up when you open them . Scale Effect would've saved her for the regular display . Scale Effect in this case would be Lightening the Dark Sea Blue to a faded Levis type color. With the Dark Blue left mostly intact on the decks .
So when you paint , take into account Scale Effect and your models will look better .I will admit though ,I did this on an A-4-E and it looked almost white even though it was Sea Grey ! Paint can trick the eye .So remember if it looks like it's right to the eye then you've hit Scale Effect right on Target !
In most cases including Model railroading this is important .The reason I mention the M.R link is the railroads in miniature have dusting , aging , and use ,in mind as well .
So look at your paint make a swatch panel and then paint .The swatch panel let's you get the shades right for planes and ships as well as armor .Model cars follow different rules so we won't include them in this discussion .
Scale Effect applies in figure painting as well .That's why the good figurist uses many layers of pale washes to achieve realism . It would'nt do to have , say a revolutionary War Soldier looking like someone painted his cheeks red now would it ? T.B.