"Modern Naval Painting guide" Topic

I'm looking for a decent painting guide for my collection of 1/2400 scale modern ships.

Russian/US/UK/French/Italian/Canadian and several NATO buyers of second hand US assets.

I've found several pictures of Russian ships with the Red Oxide decks, but the hulls are a bit ambiguous. They seem a little bit on the sea-foam green side of the spectrum.

Any help will be greatly appreciated…

Thank you in advance

I did a bunch of GHQ mini some years ago and used the following paints:

For Russian I used Testors model masters Medium Grey/ Intermediate Blue and Rust for the Top surfaces.

For USN I used Testors light ghost grey and Gunship Grey for the decks/top surfaces.

UK was Testors aircraft grey with Gunship Grey for deck/top surfaces.

Canadian navy will be the same as UK navy.

Hope that helps.

There is a cheap grey paint from Michaels that works well for the Russians, I think it is a Folk Art paint…Dolphin Grey. The blue or green hue that some pictures of Russian ships show has more to do with lighting and background than the actual color. A red-brown color such as rust works fine for the decks of Russian ships. Check out lots of images on Google first though, since some of the Russian ships have deck areas that are in grey or dark brown colors as well.

I find the best thing to do before painting any modern ship is to look at the pictures available by searching Google images. I save some of those pics and use them for reference. By looking at numerous pics, you can usually avoid making a bad color choice that might result from funny coloration, filter, background…whatever in an individual pic.

After reviewing the pics, choose from your available paints to match them. It might require mixing a paint or two to get it right. I often end up adding some white/black and mixing to get the shade I am looking for.

Oh…the Canadians seem to me to be painted in a light greenish color….much different from the UK light grey. Also, Canadian ships seem to often use a bright green on their helo decks.

"Oh…the Canadians seem to me to be painted in a light greenish color….much different from the UK light grey. Also, Canadian ships seem to often use a bright green on their helo decks."

I guess it's the same light effect you mentioned with regards to Russian naval colors.

HMCS Restigoche, first ship I served on, looks very much like HMS Exeter:

The new CN Halifax class looks very close as well:

And a Ticonderoga class to compare with USN: