Acrysion - neutrální šedá

Gray with no color bias

Neutral gray is exactly what the name promises: a tone between white and black with no admixture of blue, brown or green. It is precisely this impartiality that makes it a paint hard to substitute, because it does not distort the shades it is mixed with and reads calm and technical on a model.

Modelers choose it for instrument panels, for engine rooms, for airfield vehicles and as an intermediate layer when shading. It also serves well when an over-saturated color needs toning down: a few drops are enough for a tone to lose its loudness and move closer to a real paint job in scale.

How to get the most out of gray

• an even base under camouflage with dark fields
• a starting layer for preshading panel lines
• an ingredient for toning down over-saturated shades
• a finish on its own for interiors and technical equipment

Gray tones are best compared in daylight, because artificial lighting gives them a warm or cool cast that will not be there on the finished model. A sample sprayed on a piece of scrap plastic saves far more work than repainting a whole fuselage when the shade turns out to be wrong.

Anyone building modern vehicles will reach for gray perhaps more often than for any other color. Aircraft, warships and ground vehicles of recent decades stay within gray schemes, and the shade changes among them in small steps. Neutral gray in a palette therefore plays the part of a reliable middle from which one can go both lighter and darker.