The Little World

The use of bright yellow and bright green to attract the eye is a pretty standard practice in construction and road building – vehicles, structures, and people are all decked out accordingly to make sure someone sees them in the confusion of a building site.

And the colours are all so bright and solid. Yet when we come to paint our scale models with these same colours, we get such weak and watery results…

It is the physics of the paint, of course – the full-size vehicles have paint with a great deal of pigment in it and the particles are large. Our model pots have to have smaller particles to allow them to form a smooth finish, so we have much less visual coverage within the vehicle of the paint. Hence the need for four coats of yellow to give the impression of a full colour.

Not so bad with matte paints, but not as good as it is with darker colours.

My holiday wish? For a white or yellow that can go on in two coats and still give a solid depth to the colour. Or a paint that can be sprayed, level out, and then be cured with a UV light – so that it can be instantly re-coated.