I've been rifling through my extensive collection of GW, Vallejo, Foundry, Army Painter and Revell paints in search of the colours that I need for the late war Soviet aircraft, but have had one or two problems matching up the required shades. After a lot of long winded cross referencing and some colourful language, I've narrowed things down to a few close matches, with only one missing ingredient.
This is the dark grey-blue camouflage shade used on the upper surfaces of Soviet fighters from 1943 onwards which, despite my best efforts at colour mixing, has remained an elusive tone. However, by cross checking the Tamiya range with the Vallejo Model Colour range, I've picked out Model Colour 836: London Grey as the best fit (I think?). In the end it'll either look right or look good enough but I'd rather avoid the long winded mix and match option, if I can possibly avoid it.
So, to preserve my sanity and save a lot of time, a 17ml bottle has been ordered from Minibits and should arrive in the post this week, if I'm lucky. In the meantime, I'll be washing the La5-FN's in Army Painter Uniform Grey, which turned out to be a good match for the light grey camouflage shade used on late war Soviet fighters, even if it's a bit of an odd choice. This is turning out to be more complicated than I thought!
You know you have been painting too much when you look at a colour and thing 'hey, that's London Grey, I have that!'
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