Looking at the image above, note how quickly the colors lose saturation with distance. Note the high percentage of subdued colors such as gray, pale beige, and burnt umber. Awareness of this reality can go a long way towards improving the realism of our layouts.
Two of the driving elements of visual impact are color treatment and composition. Details matter but don’t catch the eye nearly as much. Today, let’s discuss color, hue and saturation specifically.
Saturation refers to the brilliance, or lack thereof (i.e. fade), of color. Awareness of the impact of the subject can go a long ways towards increasing the realism of our layouts. Culturally, the hobby leans towards deep and vivid saturation and an emphasis on primary colors. Look at the box art on most kits and you’ll see my point. This approach points you in the opposite direction of the real world.
First, regardless of how vivid the color of a prototype surface actually is, the further away you view it from, the more the color disappears. Even a bright red will appear grayish from a half a mile away. We run into a math problem with our models that’s not obvious. Let’s say you’re standing in the aisle and looking at a scene on your layout. You’re only three or four feet away so you get no fade from distance and atmosphere. But…and here’s the problem….you’re a “scale” three or four hundred feet away. In scale terms you should be seeing some fade. In addition, with distance objects quickly appear to lose any gloss they may actually have and assume a dead flat sheen.
The second issue is the selection of the palette itself, color hue. In the real world the vast majority of man made surfaces are: white, slate gray, beige, burnt umber, or oxide (brick) red. As you go back in time to earlier eras this is even more the case, most houses were white or brick.
We can go a long way towards increasing the realism of our layouts by greatly limiting the use of primary colors on our structures, using less saturated colors where we can, and making sure all surfaces have a flat sheen.