Leveling Up - Color Matching Brand to Brand

Now I'm a self admitted Reaper fan and I'm heavy user of both their MSP and HD paint lines. However, I don't let that stop me from trying out other brands (I use Vallejo, some P3 and a smattering of GW along with a small selection of washes from Secret Weapon). Since I have been collecting Scale75's ScaleCoat paints I thought I would push forward with some color matching and see if I could match the six Reaper colors that I have been using to create my six color wheel. The ultimate idea would be to create a six color wheel using the Scale75 paints. I'm using these six colors from Reaper because of a question I had asked Anne. Of course she didn't just give me a quick answer, she responded on the Reaper forum and pretty much hit a home run with it. Not only did she list the six Reaper equivalents I asked about (and they are only equivalents not exact matches) she told us how to do our own color matching. So that is what this particular exercise is all about seeing if there are any close matches between the "Reaper Six" and Scale75.

So here are the colors that make up the "Reaper Six" along with their, roughly, artist color equivalents:
Republique Red (61108) -  Cadmium Red (a warm red)
Crimson Red (29801) - Alizarin Crimson (a cold red)
Ultramarine Shadow (9187) - French Ultramarine Blue (a warm blue)
Sapphire blue (9016) - Cerulean Blue (a cold blue)
Clear Yellow (9095) - Cadmium Yellow Light (a warm yellow)
Sun Yellow (9008) - Cadmium Yellow Medium (a cold yellow)

We need to compare swatches of color directly against other swatches of color. To do that we are going to make a tool that will surround one color with another to get a good match. I know that sounded weird but basically we are going to make squares of color and cut the middle out. We will lay the open square over the color we want to match and see if we are close. The pictures probably explain it better:

Took one of my art journals (with perforated pages) and layed out a series of squares. The big square is 1 1/4 inches on a side. The square in the middle is a 1/2 on a side. That leaves 3/8ths of an inch for our color on all four sides of the center square.

So something like this

Cut out and ready to use

Important point, You should label the colors on the back, in case you forget what you were using, and you may as well put the stock number as well.

And from the front

A selection of the Scale75 ScaleCoat Blues plus one yellow (there are only two yellows in the whole line right now, a sad deficiency)

Now with the Reds plus the only other yellow

Reaper Color Matcher using the "Reaper Six" and the two Scale75 Color Matchers trying to see if we can emulate the "Reaper Six"

The Blue Color Matcher (plus a yellow)

The Red Color Matcher (pluse a yellow)

Republique Red is pretty close to Antares Red (Reaper Color Matcher on top, normally I would compare against a swatch of color but I didn't want to get the paints back out)

Crimson Red is a bit darker than Deep Red (the darkest red that Scale75 makes). Probably close enough in the long run.

Clear Yellow is a tad lighter than Sol Yellow. Again probably close enough for our purposes

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Sapphire Blue is a bit darker than Mediterranean Blue. Mediterranean Blue is not as "cold" as Sapphire Blue. 

Ultramarine Shadow is a bit lighter its closest match Navy Blue. Navy Blue is not as "warm" as Ultramarine Blue

I didn't even bother comparing Sun Yellow against Tenere Yellow. They aren't even close. In fact I might argue that Tenere Yellow isn't a yellow at all, its almost ivory in color. I suppose it might be a yellow tone.

So that's the tool. Its small enough to fit in my journal that I'm tracking my ReaperCon 2015 projects in and that will also help flatten them out. I'm thinking I need to mount them on a thicker stock of something. I'll figure that out later.