Paint it Black!

[Old Wombat]

All well and good, but were the bunnies on board at the same time??

Two of them were! 

It was pretty difficult  to keep one's mind on things aeronautic in the face of such distractions. 

The Area Rule perhaps?

Unfortunately, if the front end has disproportionately larger dimensions than the rear end with a very narrow waist between them, some of the members of this forum (possibly including myself ) may become even more distracted from other, more aeronautical assets.

[McColm]

The Royal Canadian Air Force have an all women ground crews on their CP-140's. The highlight of my year was the September NATO live exercise at RAF Gibraltar. I wish I had paid more attention in the French language classes at school.

[scooter]

All well and good, but were the bunnies on board at the same time??

Two of them were! 

It was pretty difficult  to keep one's mind on things aeronautic in the face of such distractions. 

The Area Rule perhaps?

Unfortunately, if the front end has disproportionately larger dimensions than the rear end with a very narrow waist between them, some of the members of this forum (possibly including myself ) may become even more distracted from other, more aeronautical assets.

Huh? What?  I was...distracted

[Dizzyfugu]

Hi Paint it black - or sort of

one technique that is popular at the moment is the put a darker shade along panel lines (I work in 48 scale).  So how do you put a darker shade of black on black.

One trick is to add one quarter of red paint to the black.  It looks black if you don't have black to compare it with black.  Anyway, once the aeroplance is painted with reddish black, then paint on the black lines for the contrast.  Anyway, that is my technique.

Good luck

Bernie

Might try that in the vague future on a Korean War USMC night intruder whif - is supposed to become all black instead of dark blue, with red markings. I'll give it a try. 

[Old Wombat]

Hi Paint it black - or sort of

one technique that is popular at the moment is the put a darker shade along panel lines (I work in 48 scale).  So how do you put a darker shade of black on black.

One trick is to add one quarter of red paint to the black.  It looks black if you don't have black to compare it with black.  Anyway, once the aeroplance is painted with reddish black, then paint on the black lines for the contrast.  Anyway, that is my technique.

Good luck

Bernie

Might try that in the vague future on a Korean War USMC night intruder whif - is supposed to become all black instead of dark blue, with red markings. I'll give it a try. 

You could probably try the same trick with blue, which could give you a really nice blue-black sheen, if you're lucky.

[Logan Hartke]

I know this is talking about physical paints versus pixels, but all the blacks in my recent profiles are actually gray. In some cases, they're surprisingly light gray, only black in comparison to the other colors around it. For that reason, I use very dark gray (almost black) for the panel lines.



When I want a more worn look to the black, something that's been in service for a while, I give some texture to the black, fading to much lighter grays in some areas due to wear. More importantly, I leave the light gray 3D accent to the panel lines, giving the impression of worn, chipped edges.



On the left is a black I use on my profiles, one of the darkest. On the right is "true" black.



Cheers,

Logan

[Dizzyfugu]

Yes, black is tricky - just as white. The end of the color scale is tough, at least when you want to add shades or some light effects. In fact, many white surfaces I recently did are actually light grey, because pure white is just very harsh!

[McColm]

When I was a Silk Screen Printer we used blue, yellow and then red to create the picture or print. Black was applied last to give a 3-D look. The age of the computer took over and printing became automated. Straight off the roll ,through the dryer and onto the guillotine in the larger printing shops. The fiddly stuff is still done by hand and litho press.