Steve's Models

[Eichhörnchen]

Is the practice of lightening the tone of paint used on models, usually by the addition of white; the smaller the scale of the model, the lighter the tone needs to be, so the logic goes, for it to capture the look of the full-sized "prototype" (the idea being that a large object, such as an aeroplane, can look surprisingly light in tone even if it's dark in colour, especially on a sunny day, because of the amount of light gathered then reflected to the observer).

The way to replicate this and give the small model more of the "presence" of the real thing is to raise the overall tone of the finish. There are some colours, like red, where this can be a problem: you'd just end up with a pink Fokker Triplane, for example; in this case there's not much can be done.




These white-metal cars were about 1:76 scale (designed for railroad layouts to HO:OO) and so very small; I've tried to show them actual size here. You can see how I rendered mudguards, tyres etc in what is actually a dark grey, but in this scale your eye tells you that the colour is black. Notice especially the roof panel on the van: on the real vehicle this would have been a black or very dark fabric, but on such a tiny model I had to paint it mid-grey in order for it to look right.

The little Austin "Ruby" at left is painted dark grey then given a coat of not-too glossy varnish (another "scale" issue: a highly glossy model looks all wrong, even if the real object it imitates is highly polished). The Austin will look like a black car on the layout, however.

The green car would've been quite a dark green, but if you sprayed such a tiny model with the same paint as used on the real car, it would appear much too dark because it would gather and reflect far less light.

There can be problems, such as when you come to black decals, because they are usually too black, despite their small scale. You can get a mismatch, which I've tried to illustrate with my 1:72 scale Spit below: the prop blades and tyres are in "scale" black (i.e. dark grey) but they clash somewhat with the kit's invasion-stripe decal at rear.



The "dark" green & grey camo is lightened too, but this just becomes a matter of estimation by "eye" (a sunnier day will make a plane look lighter than on a dull day anyway). And of course you may just think this is a load of bunk...