Hello forum, my name is Mark Holoboski and I have just self published a research paper I have been working on for nearly 20 years. It covers Olive Drab and Marine Corps Green from 1918 to 1973 when camo pattern painting was becoming a thing. It answers most questions people have had regarding the subject, OD brown vs OD Green, the specifications, color standards and their CIELAB values, tolerances, light, dark, grey, vivid, etc. Granted in modeling, knowing the exact color may be overkill at 1/35 scale, but it does help to have an idea of what the color was at 1:1 scale. For those interested in WW2 USMC or Cold War OD, the paper would be very helpful since those colors have been long forgotten. The paper is available on my One Drive account here: OD Explained 1_0
and also on Facebook (the link is on page 2 of the article) where I have created a support group to discuss the technology used, photographs, etc. Also if non armor people would like help with their colors (naval for example) I would be glad to help.
The paper is free, you may distribute it as you like. There is an optional chip set for sale which is described at the end of the paper if you need
GREAT information. May I be so bold as to add⌠It also comes down to the individual manufacturer. I know this will come as a shock to some, BUT not every company meets the exact standard EVERYTIME, cost cutting is what can give different shades.
GREAT POST
Thanks for that, it will take some time to read but it looks interesting (at least to someone like me who builds a good deal of Second World War Allied vehicles ).
A few years ago Camp Ripleyâs M4A3E2 was in the shop for a repaint and to remove its post war modifications. I got into the paint shop before it was actually painted but after some of cosmetic work was done.
I got a pic of the area by the hull blower after its cover was removed. Under it was probably was the original paint or a repaint after the war.
The document is written for subject matter experts and very difficult for me to understand. It seems like the authorâs intent is to settle the debate but I found the pictures and presentation so confusing it pushed me a bit towards the âAnything Goesâ camp. A better synopsis is probably, âwhatever I do, it will be wrongâ. Haha!
Edit: A few hours have passed and I just reread my comment. It could be misinterpreted as a criticism. The research is very interesting. The problem is, since I am not a subject matter expert, it does not make sense. As a model builder, I need a table listing Date in Use, Things Using Color, and Color (CMYK / RGB). I do not need color chips or a perfect, exact match because the color will get tweaked all over the place when effects painting.
Mark, so good to see you on the forum. Iâm glad to see youâve published your paper. Iâm not sure if youâll remember, but we exchanged emails years ago and I believe it was you who provided me a great deal of information on the origins of the MASSTER pattern painting scheme introduced in the USAREUR in 1973. That information has been of great value to me over the years.
The only thing I have still been unable to locate is the actual USAREUR regulation from 1973 which actually kicked off the program.
Congratulations on publishing and welcome to the forum!
I thank everyone for the nice comments. There are a few areas that I feel need touching up on. First and foremost, it has a steep learning curve, I would think it would take a person a year of reading, pondering, and coming back to it off & on to really get to some conclusions for your own personal work. I know itâs technicalâŚbut thatâs why the community has been confused for decades. When I started out, Professor Fairchild at RIT and Gordon Leggett at HunterLab were helping smooth out the learning curve for me and to return the favor, I have set up a Facebook group where I can help others with the learning curve. Or you can just email me. My contact info is in the paper.
Second, there are chips for sale, but they arenât really necessaryâI would hope the paint companies buy them and they could mass produce the colors in their products and end this color confusion once and for all. If you not care to get the chips, I provided data for all the relevant FS595 colors and many people have those fan decks. In case you donât have them, I could post data on some hobby paints that are probably on your shelf and you can get an idea for the colors. I have been reluctant to do that because quality control in paint companies is rather low and there can be color drift between batches so again, confusion would persist. But if you guys would find that helpful, I would do it.
Anyway, take you time with the document. There is a lot to chew on and itâs not going anywhere and Im here to help.
thathaway3, I do recall talking to someone about the camo pattern painting back in the day. Iâm sure that I donât have the actual regulations but I do have a)other materials on MASSTER/MERDC, b) the index of regulations at the Carlisle depository & c) material from CECOM about experimental painting that was going on in 7th Army that preceded the MASSTER/MERDC. I will take a look at what I have for you.
Whitney, you are correct. There is no such thing as perfect color matching. It always comes down to what the customer will accept as a match. With that said, there is data in the paper that is from actual paint measured in the 40s & 50s that do indicate more realistically what was going on with the actual paint product, not just the standards. The data points to the factory paint managed by ORD & QM being very tight, with a dE<2.5 which does give a variety of colors as illustrated in Figure 1. The in the field paints (ex. OD9) managed by the COE also seemed as tight although they preferred a hue shift more towards green than the ORD/QM color. But the data is there, take your time and reach your own conclusions.
The axes are not labeled, however, to answer your first question: What this means is that some colors called âolive drabâ are similar to sand. The color ranges blend into one another.
Chromaticity is a measure of color using two parameters, hue and saturation. Therefore, white and black are essentially the same: white is fully saturated, black is unsaturated. Saturation is a difficult term in this regard. A fully saturated color is a color that cannot be any more intenseâit canât get any more blue, or red, or green, or white.
This is NOT easy to understand, because most of us have an intuitive grasp of color hard wired into our brains. For scientific, quantitative analysis of color, various mathematical systems have been developed, for both reflected and transmitted light (different but related). Beyond this, it gets complicated. For more detail, see âChromaticityâ on Wikipedia.
Also, I should have mentioned, that graph is a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional model.
I did that before I came here, but IMHO itâs too specialist for the general public (like me). It feels to me like it assumes more background in the matter than I have, and I think I know more about the technical side of colour than the average person (which is to say: I know just enough to know I hardly know anything about it ).
Hi Kurt, if you want to play with the polygons, the Munsell software is needed. Its $10 a year.
Picking a point in the overlap, x = .355, y = .365
For Sand, Y = 30 => Munsell = 3.99Y6.00/2.48
For OD, Y = 7 => Munsell = 5.10Y3.10/1.68
The OD in this case is an OD Brown
).
