Hi,

Got a Tamiya Mk1 Spitfire painted up in the Tamiya recommended camoflage scheme. The dark earth colour looks way to red-brown for me. Is there a way to tone it down sufficiently?

I gather from what you're saying that you don't particularly like the final color of the Earth tone. About the only way to change it, is to carefully mask (if you have a hard demarcation line), and repaint. If you painted free hand, then just a careful repainting would do the trick.

One step in the over all weathering process I use is a few light coats of Earth and or sand for a faded/weathered look. That will change both colors, and might work well in your case.

Joel

Hmmmmm, I was thinking maybe a light overspray of buff might do the trick - but, i'll try a light coat of XF52 first.

Ta.

XF52 is flat earth, and it's way too dark. FX 57 is a neutral Buff tone, and much closer to produce the effect that you're looking for.

When possible always check your references for color matches so you don't run into this problem again.
Joel

Hi Joel.

Having no experience modelling Spitfires I simply followed the painting instructions (I usually do WWII Luftwaffe aircraft and there are volumes out there on RAL colours) which stiplated a 50:50 mix of XF52 (dark Earth) and XF64 (Red Brown). Clearly, that isn't right.

To fix it i'm going to simply lighten the mixture with white and overspray the panels, leaving the darker colour around the panel lines as a sort of 'pre-shade'.

Hope it works!

Roland,
As long as you really thin the mixture out so it's more of a dusting, doing the complete top of the aircraft will yield a more uniform and realistic look. Having one color dusty looking, while the rest of the aircraft without that effect just won't have the final effect you're after.

By adding FX-2 White to FX-57 Flat Earth, you are slowly moving in the direction of what FX-52 Buff looks like. Looking forward to seeing your pictures.

Joel

I solved the problem finally!

First i mixed about 20% XF57 (Buff) into the base mixture of Dark Earth and Red Brown, then i added some X2 (white) to the mixture to further lighten it. I then sprayed each panel duitifully to try to preserve the pre-shading underneath. Finally, I oversprayed the whole top half of the kit with thinned down buff (it should be noted that at this point, the whole top half is brown, i'll be overlaying the green camoflage later). No pictures yet, but it looks very close to a colour picture I have a Mk1 in a reference book.

Quite pleased with it. What's hacked me off, is that the Tamiya reference guide is quite clearly wrong...

Roland,
Looking forward to seeing some pictures of the corrected camo scheme.

Many times the colors that you see on your monitor aren't what was originally scanned in. It's just the nature of the beast.

Joel