A week's break

Now that I got the previous model built and this week has only four workdays before a long four-day travel weekend, I didn't really feel like starting a new model. Yeah, I'm a lazy bastard, I admit that openly.

Because I don't have any other actionful and exciting topics going on, I shall return momentarily to the paint set I bought for my Finnish King Tiger. This won't be a review or anything like that, don't worry.

Finnish paints

Simply to save myself from unnecessary trouble I invested into Lifecolor's Finnish WWII Army Camouflage Set [Limited Edition] . This way I got all the necessary paints without wasting ages in a shop or the net and ending up with hasty and potentially very unlucky "Damnit already, I'll take that one now!" decisions. Those never work.

Exciting design!

Facts and just facts

The front cover of the box declares that someone called Jukka Purhonen is responsible for the historical research and - I guess - the Correctness and Properness of the colours. I don't mind, if that makes someone happy and encourages them to buy something. To me and maybe some others who take these things a bit more calmly are content with the knowledge that the finnish army's camo pattern was green/light gray/brown.

For example, I couldn't care less what someone somewhere says about one individual tank's paint scheme - in the best case basing his (or her) opinion on black and white photos. From the fourties. Not that the colour photos from those years are much more reliable... So screw the research and I'm sorry to say, mr Purhonen, but this is just your opinion on this topic.

Personally, I could've used any semirandom paint from Vallejo, for example, using a type of moss green, a chocolate brown and a light sand paint. Any of the available greens and so on. Based on the feeling it'd been an equally finnish scheme.
I'm afraid I always complain about these same things: there's space for interpretation, nothing was always made 1:1 the same way, sunlight, weather and time do funny things to previously pristine paintjobs. Not to mention the war that was going on. In any case, I don't think that the ultimate truth even exists. Not unless someone invents a time machine and uses it to the most important cause imaginable: taking perfect reference pictures 8)

The innards of the set

If you remember to open the box, you'll find six containers of paint. Field grey, blue grey and russian green I didn't get to use this time for some reason, but I can comment on the other three I used. And I will.

So this was the first time I encountered Lifecolor products, at least I don't think I've ever seen them anywhere around here. Of course I had to thin them a bit for the airbrush and obviously I had to utilize the trial and error -approach because I wasn't quite sure of how these things would behave. In the end they were fine, they covered well and the colours themselves seemed very neat.

Despite my earlier bitching I'm not dissatisfied or unhappy with the set. The colours are just fine to my eyes, they look as they should, they're nice to use and in general they work like you'd expect. Even if I'm not trying to review this product, I'm in a way reviewing it anyway. How odd.
Anyway, I'm quite happy to give it a +1 and a "thumbs up" 8)

Oh my, there's some art on the inside. I'm surprised!

Some final thoughts

The back cover of the box kindly has a short explanation of how which colour should generally be used. The Soviet (Russian) green is - surprisingly - good for Isorla or more commonly known as captured enemy equipment. The grey/green/brown that I used goes in the three-tone scheme, field grey to older heavy equipment and the last, blue grey in conjunction with white is used in winter camo.
That's pretty nice, you don't have to wonder too much with the paints and what to use it for.

Oh well, usually you know what you're doing, but maybe if you ponder about those things while checking your stored paints and find this set without a clue of what to build next :p