Controversial Color

Spitfire XVI SL721/JM-R, 1946

Two things pop to mind when viewing these pictures – first the quality is crap. I tried white balance and extra lighting, but the basic color is just too close to my photo booth. Maybe someday I’ll try to make these better…

Second, the actual color of the aircraft. From what I’ve been able to find online, the color could be in a range from Sky Blue (being very light) to a darker medium blue. One reference indicated quite confidently that it was PRU Blue mixed 50/50 with White.

The Subject

This is Air Chief Marshal James Robb’s hack and for some reason he chose a light blue color. What color this truly is supposed to be is a bit of guess work, but I had the decals and decided to make it.

The Model

Another of the Heller XVI kits from my Spring 2016 batch build. This one has the shading and I lightly sprayed the light blue until I had the coverage I wanted. What is different with this kit, and in hindsight I wish I’d used acrylics, is that I used an enamel because I had a light blue that looked good. All the others where too gray or too dark or too light. Ultimately I used my old jar of Testors Light Blue in the small square bottle. Likely because I’m rusty when using enamels it did not go down as well as I wanted, ultimately having a bit of an orange-peel texture. Instead of ditching the model I went ahead and finished it.

Decals are by Lifelike Decals (sheet 72-006) and went down quite readily using Daco medium setting solution on top of Future/Kleer varnish. I finished with Micro Scale’s Satin varnish to seal it all in and knock the sheen down a bit.

Summary

Ultimately the blue looks a bit too saturated. If I were to do this one again I’d use acrylics and I’d lighten the light blue by at least 25% white, maybe more. Of course I had fun with it, albeit I’m still not sold on pre-shading. My wife loves the color, so it’ll remain on my shelf and likely I’ll not redo it.

Thanks for looking…