Decals Before Paint?

Since I can't buy decals for the tangerine and blue CNJ units I decided to make my own. This would be pretty straight forward if I had access to one of those old ALPS printers. They can print in white which means they can be used to create decals that can be seen on dark paint. Unfortunately they are hard to come by and because of that rather expensive. I've also read that the company that made them will stop supporting them in 2015. No more white ink after that. I know you can use an inkjet printer for making decals but there is one big drawback to that. No white ink.

So how can I make my own decals? I can use white decal paper! There is, however, a small problem in doing that. You would need to trim the decal so the white doesn't show. While that may be possible on bigger objects it is a viable approach at 1:160. I had to think on this one quite a while.

Then the other day I was reading an article on making said decals. The writer suggested that usable decals CAN be printed on white paper. The trick is to use a color background. The printer prints the background while leaving white areas "blank". This allows the white paper to show through. You just have to make the background a close match to the color of the model...

Decal Sheet in Visio Program

Ignore the white holes. They are problems with the screen capture, not the decals.

Anyway, I tried this out, using the CNJ units as a test. It works, sorta. I used Microsoft Visio to make the decals. I do this because unlike my photo editing software Visio doesn't pixelate the image when it's reduced and printed. I used an HP 6500 color printer to print the decal. The reason I mention the printer is the fact that I was surprised to find the resolution of the printer was so fine that even the smallest type face (1 pt) was readable, albeit with a magnifying glass. Those heralds actually look better than the ones on my Microscale decals...

Printed Decals

As you can see I carefully cut out the heralds and lettering for the CNJ F Units and applied them. The decals went on pretty easy except for one I left in the water too long (more than 15 seconds). The color broke up and ruined the lettering. Apparently Testors decal fixer doesn't fix too well. Fortunately I had made extras. After applying I used some decal set so they would conform to the surface...

First Set of Decals

Two things are painfully obvious in the images. First there is a thin band of white around each decal. Second the background color does not match the paint. I think the white is caused by cutting the white paper. I might be able to solve it by making the patch of background color bigger. If not, I can touch up the edges with paint, which brings us the second problem. The color match seems the bigger issue. How do I pull that off?

Like so many other problems, trial and error is the only real way to find a solution. Basically this means experimenting with colors on the computer until something looks reasonably close. I tried various tricks I could come up with like importing images of the prototype and the painted model into Paint Shop Pro and trying to match the color...

Sampled Colors

In the photo above I have taken samples of the colors from the model image. You can see two orange and blue rectangles in the color bar on the right side. I can now flood those colors into any other image in the program. I open the original herald (a nice crisp image) and change the colors...

"Flooding" the Colors

I was able to get a match on the orange, but I had to change the paint color. Rather than clean the shell and respray I brush painted the nose with Tamiya X6 Orange. This is more yellow than the previous color. Came pretty close...

Somewhat Closer in Color

The blue is a whole 'nother story. I brushed on three other blues I have on hand and missed with all four colors. The decal has to get darker...

Blue Angle Blue and Flat Sea Blue

Gloss Blue and Gloss Dark Blue

Fortunately I've had some experience with matching colors on a computer. Making digital models of trains requires trying to get the the "skin" looking like the real thing. Each color has a code. Change the code and you change the color. That's how I was able to create these...

Milwaukee Road "Quills"

New Haven DL109'

Matching real paint isn't as easy. I did a bunch of research on the internet and finally found a VERY helpful site called ScaleModelDB. This site will give you the equivalent color in model paints to the code you key in...

ScaleModelDB

It uses a hexidecimal code used for webpage colors. I can get that code from Paint Shop Pro using the color tool...

Color Tool and HTML Code

I keyed in #F9B93B and ScaleModelDB showed me that the paint closest to the orange in my decal is available in a plethora of Model Master paints. All of them are for model automobiles. The closest appears to be Roadster Orange.

Now I need to match the blue. Using the RGB code from Paint Shop Pro I found that the matching colors are not readily available at the local hobby shops. Luckily the same site has color charts for all the model paints available. I looked up what I thought was a blue I could use. I found that Tamiya Flat Blue looked right and used the database to find similar colors. This brought up a list of paints, but more importantly, gave me codes I could use in Paint Shop Pro...

Tamiya Flat Blue

I think the color is much too light for a CNJ engine, at least not one in the early 1950's Have to look some more.

So the gist of this long diatribe is that I end up creating the decals using colors I believe to be the closest to the prototype. I then match the decals to a color to paint the model with. I know it's totally backwards to the conventional wisdom but what do you expect from a guy who builds grades from the top down.

So now I'm back to looking for a good match to CNJ's "seamist" blue.

Regards,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad