It's pretty much a given that, by the in-game starrting period of 1910, most sky navies have shifted to some neutral paintscheme - grey (light, medium, dark), blue (likewise) or equivelant. Now the exact details have not been finalised, and some constraints exist - the main artpiece we have appears to show both French and British levs in the same shade of grey, I assure you they will have different colours officially.
Now in the real world this move started in about 1904-055 - like so many things naval in the mundane timeline, the mundane battle of Tsushima gets a share of the blamr. That battle meant long-range fire began to dominate. At 2000 yards it didn't matter what colour you painted your ship; at 10,000-20,000 yards it became really important, given you didn't want to make things easy.
Okay, so levs are in 191- still fighting at ranges the mundane Jellico would consider short, but 'modern' schemes are duller. But that doesn't mean pre-1905 paint schemes need to be. There's the obvious "Great White Sky Fleet', and we want to give people interested in painting lots of reasons to paint the minis (whether they're pre-painted or not).
I happen to have a moderate library of things naval, including a reprint of Janes 1914. And one common thing about most of them is that the photos are all black-and-white. Yes, there'll be some paintings, which are often lovely, but there's not a lot of hard colour examples of our-world, 'mundane' naval colours pre-1905.
Now I happen to have picked up a book on cruisers which includes colourised photos and/or postcards of WW1 and pre-WW1 naval vessels from many countries. And there are paintings out there, too, which show how naval vessels are painted. For example the classic British pre-WW1 ships had red underwater (anti-fouling paint) with a white waterline, black sides, white upperworks and buff funnels (that means brown, not muscular
). But this book has a few example of other navies.
So it got me thinking - what other resources do you lot - points at the forum members - have that you could bring to the table here, in a real 'commonly creative' way?
SO here's what I'd like you to do. Raid your book collections, libraries and that intarnut thing for colour images, or solid references, to pre-WW1, pre-'dull & bland' naval paintschemes, and post them. Does anyone know what colours Peruvian warships were painted? With enough people looking, we can find out. This will all feed into our final process for determining what the pre-1905 'parade' paintschemes for our sky navies will be. Whether you fancy pre-painted or post-painted, this should be a great way to share our common interest/obsession, and see things you'd not be able to see normally. Ship-wise, anyway ...
SO here's the deal. If you scan or photo images from a book, quote the source - book name, author(s), publisher. If you post pictures from another site, name the site. Keep the image sizes reasonable. And don't post things others have already posted, unless the quality is amazingly higher.
Any questions, post'em here ... otherwise, gentlemen, start your sourcebooks!
Worktroll
