>
>>2. I'm a casual WW1 modeler - my major a/c interest is Schneider - so
>>I haven't probed deeply into the intricacies of lozenge. But I'm
>>curious as to "why". Who thunk up the idea that regular hexagons of
>>strange color and certain size would yield invisibility at x thousand
>>feet?
>>
>
> I don't believe that the pattern was intended to "hide" the aircraft
>but that it was to work like ship camoflage. It was intended to make it
>difficult to disinguish size and direction of travel. This is just an
>educated guess I don't really know ( but it sounds good ).
> It can't be meant to hide it. I mean how many yellow or pink clouds
>have you seen? The underside colors are not consistent with something
>that you're trying to hide against the sky.
>
The idea behind the odd combination of colors found in lozenge
camouflage is rooted in color theory that was being developed during the
latter part of the 19th century. Look at paintings by the French painter
Seurat. He painted in what was called a "pointilist" style, that is he
used no brush strokes but applied thousands of dots of color on his
canvases. When the viewer stood several feet away from his work the
disparate colors of dots blended to make the image/scene that he was
painting.
The colors found in lozenge fabrics work in a similar way. When
viewed from a distance, these varied colors are intended to meld together
and have the appearance of a non-descript color that will blend in with the
background against which the aircraft is flying. Too frequently, our
experience, particularly as modelers is to look at these machines at close
range and not in the setting, or distance, in which the camouflage was
designed to be the most effective.
Charles
hartc@spot.colorado.edu