Hobby color - kouřově šedá

Smoke you can meter out

This shade sits on the border between an opaque and a translucent paint. In a thin coat it only soils the surface with a grayish veil, and as the deposit builds it saturates until a dense smoky film appears. It is precisely this gradual metering that makes it the number one tool for dusting and sooting a model.

Its typical job is exhaust traces. Behind the exhausts of jet engines, around a tank gun barrel after firing or behind the stack of a steam locomotive a band appears that is dark at its root and fades downstream. It is sprayed from the edge outward in short bursts until a transition with no sharp edge is achieved.

Glazing and canopies

The second use aims at clear parts. Car modelers tint side windows and rear glass with it, and on aircraft it is used to darken the armored sections of a canopy or to suggest a smoke filter. The coat has to be really thin, otherwise the glazing loses its transparency and looks dingy.

It is thinned with water or with the maker's own thinner from the same water-based range, and in practice it is used only with an airbrush, because a brush leaves visible stroke edges. For first attempts it pays to thin it more than seems sensible and to build in layers; smoke once laid down can only be taken off by sanding. The bottle holds 10 ml.

When it is better to hold back

Sooting adds credibility to a model only until it starts to overwhelm the shape. The proven test goes like this: step back an arm's length and look at whether the color is still visible under the grime. If it is not, the coat is too heavy. A machine from a parade carries a barely perceptible exhaust trace, whereas a frontline aircraft after weeks of operations has it drawn out beyond the trailing edge.