Painting Guidance

[av8vtol]

Hi All,
Just got my first batch of 1/6000 WW2 ships for my first venture into Naval gaming ~ Broad question I know but can anyone give some suggestions please on colours to use for Brits, Germans, US & Jap Navy ships & also what colours etc they use for the ships bases/sea?
Any guidance on reference material also appreciated.

By the way I tend to use Humbrol Oil based or Vallejo acrylic paints but open to any other ranges for best results.

Cheers in advance.
Jas

[afilter]

Vallejo are my paint of choice.

Make sure you wash the ships good before painting with warm soapy water this will help the paints stick better. Also apply a primer to all before sarting.

At that scale a variety of grays would be recomended. I used a bark blue on ly bases and then dry brush with white to highlight the wakes.

All depends on the amount of detail you want to apply to the ships. For Cruisers and DDs I would simply paint and apply a wash/ink and then dry brush to bring out details.

For capital ships vallejo "old wood" works well for decking. You can lighten or darken for effect on different ships.

There are many pics of ships and models on the web for basic camo and colros, Again, at that scale you will only achieve so much detail so a little goes a long way.

HTH,

[shigure]

For WWII IJN warships FS 36118 seems to be a good balance between the dark grays used by the four main yards.

Quoted from the Ship Modellers forum:
Regarding IJN greys - there are 4 known formulations: Kure Grey, Yokosuka Grey, Sasebo Grey, Maizuru Grey. IJN "Grey" is a darker than medium grey tinged with blue. Kure Grey is probably considered the ubiquious version, compared with Yokosuka showing a little more green, Sasebo darker, Maizuru a little lighter and closer to a neutral grey.

There are also several unknown variations from private yards (Mistsubishi, Kawasaki, Uraga, etc.) that are probably very close to the official greys.

I don't know that i would get too hung up on the exact shade unless you are modeling a specific date. So many things impact color - weathering, sun, time between refits, yard for refit, the availability of mixes at a yard, etc. While Nagato was built at Kure, and would have certainly been coated with Kure grey at her completion, you would need to get a listing of her movements and various yard visits between 1924 and 1934 to pinpoint an exact shade.

Don't know about Humbrol colors but S&S has issued the IJN color chip chart to use for matching. WEM, Gunze, and Tamiya (Kure and Sasebo only), among others, make paints to match.

[regiamarina]

Hey Jas,

for the US generally blue depending upon the year. The following website is brilliant. The guy has done a database of all the colour schemes used by the US during the war and which ships used which schemes and when.

www.shipcamouflage.com/index.htm

For the Japanese dark grey or mid grey with wood decks.

The Germans and British used a light grey with varying camo, though the british also used a pink scheme. There is no quick answer for these countries. Try the following site for the Germans.

www.bismarck-class.dk/

As Shigure quoted modelling sites are really good.

www.steelnavy.com/index.htm

My fleets are in 1/2400 so the colours might come out a bit darker in your smaller scale.

Hope the info helps.
Martin