"50 shades of (battleship) grey?" Topic

I have a bunch of 1/6000 Hallmark British, US, Italian and Japanese ships to paint up for the Med and pacific.

In that scale, is there any difference in the shade of grey for hull/superstructure and tan(?) for the deck between one nationality and the other?

It would be nice to perhaps have some variations, if possible. Any suggestions for the correct shade of Vallejo to use in that scale, with perhaps a black wash?

There is a Vallejo suggested for all the different grays. Not home at the moment but, if someone hasn't linked it, I will post it

In that scale, is there any difference in the shade of grey for hull/superstructure and tan(?) for the deck between one nationality and the other?

Yes, but the small surface area means you have to use pretty markedly different colors to see any difference.

I can't offer cogent advice on Vallejo colors, but I do have general advice about painting 1/6000 ships:

I found with grays that the main noticeable difference was in shade – dark, medium, light. I tried adding some bluish hue to my Austro-Hungarian fleet and can barely tell unless I'm specifically looking for it. The surrounding blue sea surface overwhelms the blue tint and they just look gray.

Deck colors actually can make a big difference, because the light reflecting off of horizontal surfaces is typically much more noticeable (and probably greater) than the light reflecting off vertical surfaces (unless you're using a table-level light source). I found that differing deck colors was the easiest way to distinguish nationalities between gray opponents. As with all things 1/6000, you'll have to choose colors that are more severely different from each other and quite a bit brighter in the jar than you'd like, but if you stick to broad categories like pale, yellowish, light tan, dark tan, and reddish (e.g. Japanese linoleum)

I never found a wash much use at this scale. Except maybe on battleships, the details are really just too small to hold enough liquid.

Drybrushing works brilliantly, but you have to use pretty high contrasts between layers. Also keep in mind that the tiny scale means you need to choose a color much lighter than you'd expect to get the final impression you want. I wanted my WWI Italians to be a pretty light gray, and I ended up painting the vertical surfaces with a pretty light gray and drybrushing with a near-white to get that. DDs, TBDs and torpedo boats that are supposed to be black I actually paint a dark gray and drybrushed lightly with medium gray, and even that is too dark to see.

Finally, I recommend painting the US ships in the various non-gray cammo schemes if you can get away with it. They're not too hard to do at this scale, they make the ships more easily identifiable, and colorful dazzle cammo schemes are really nice eye candy on the table.

- Ix

If you Google this:

Vallejo WWII Naval Color Equivalents

…you will find some suggestions. Hope it helps.

I second Yellow Admiral. Don't get hung up on specific colors but focus on contrast. You need to vary shades and colors more at this scale to make them look right. This means being liberal in the color contrast versus what you think is historical.

Not only all that, real ship colors look different in different light. I painted my Soviet ships a greenish grey based on what I saw in the Med in the 80's but in bright sun they look different than overcast or dusk.

Remember that early war US ships are shades of blue, including decks. Lots of info on the web on the specifics of paint schemes depending on where/when you are fighting.

There are different colors for IJN ships, depending on where they were home-ported or overhauled.

Testors Model Master has the colors, but I think they're only available in enamel anymore.