Olive drab is not green - WHAT?

[Stokesy44]

Just caught a cool vid on YT from Andy's hobby headquarters.

The vid was about fading olive drab. First thing he does is say 'olive drab is not green' and shows it by mixing yellow with black - and as if by magic, he's got olive drab right there! Then he says the way to lighten olive drab, therefore, is to add yellow. Never add white, add Tamiya XF60 dark yellow if you want to fade the paint.

Perfect timing too as I'm getting to the painting stage on my M10.

Now I can only speak for myself but whoa, I did not know that. I've learned something new today. Now I'm just hoping I don't have a Homer Simpson moment and forget something I already knew in its place!

[chalkyw]

Primary green is created by mixing yellow and blue so I guess the black just makes it a darker greeny yellow which is what Olive Drab is....

works for me

[Lysus]

Huh. I never would have guessed. Filing this fact away for future builds.

[RobBye]

If I recall correctly, black results from mixing red and blue, so olive could be made by mixing red, blue, and yellow?

[Darklen]

That's why when I preshade, I use yellow, not white. White looks too stark of a shade.

[RobertK]

I think this youtube video is one of the easiest tutorials of to create our shadows and highlights. Having a color wheel around is actually very handy.

This video is not mine, just sharing it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYZWDEmLR90

[Stokesy44]

Reminds me of that line in a UB40 song, 'the more I find out the less I know!'

[MightyDraw]

Depending on the specific black, and how it was made sometimes the pigments/dyes are close to blue or contain some blue. This is true too with oil paints, I can't recall exactly (its been a while) but certain blacks in oil paint plus a yellow will result in a green. So its not exactly accurate to say that olive drab is "not green", you're just mixing yellow and a blue.

[Vleugelmoer]

Reminds me of that line in a UB40 song, 'the more I find out the less I know!'

Here's a bit of trivia you might find interesting. UB40 was inspired by no other that one of the greatest thinkers of our time Albert Einstein himself. In writing this song.

[cib2265]

To add to the mystery, panzer grey is not blue.....its actually black

Sorry, couldnt help myself!

Here's a good article about OD - like the panzer grey hue shift to light blue, it looks like modellers have kept on adding green to make their drab (pun intended) vehicles stand out. Spanish style hasn't helped the matter of course, with modulation taking over as the fad too....

http://www.militarymodelling.com/news/a ... drab/4536/

[WMH]

To further confusion the same can be said about the Russian 4BO protective Green
http://matadormodels.co.uk/tank_museum/ ... 02ussr.htm and another http://www.4bogreen.com/colors
And a photo from Bundesarchive https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... r_KW-1.jpg