Usually when I ask the gang here for pictures to base colors for painted and bare wood stain, I get blank stares. Why? I suspect it's just because there are no direct source in most cases. TRUSTWORTHY SOURCES ARE SCARCE. The overall appearance of this model and almost all others on box cover art, except for recent ships like HMS Victory and USS Constitution, is created entirely by the artist. Artist's depictions are so influential that models kits made decades later are based on them. The Heller kits are OLD. They set the bar on how several ships are
thought by many to appear today. Color choices from 70 years ago become accepted as factual. In truth, there is little evidence to suggest a color scheme, except perhaps some artist's painting from 1680 or something, and even that is hugely suspect. But, when making a model you grab greedily at every bit of information you can find, and that isn't much. You usually choose to copy a feature that someone before you chose, hoping it may be right, but you'll never really know. You end up creating an appearance that it your idea of what it should look like.
Same ship. Compare the details, like ornamentation, location of the channels, and stern castle shape, in addition to color. Which one is right?
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