Painting the Hull

At first I thought the hull was painted white, but after viewing some photos of the Rouen and her sister ship Rosario, I found the hull to be a light shade of gray. I used two coats of Model Master Flat Gull Gray enamel with light sanding (600 grit) between coats. The kit comes with decals for the green stripe above the waterline. It has been my experience that big, long decals like this are very difficult to get on straight. Because of this I decided to paint the green stripe using Testors Flat Beret Green. Tamiya masking tape is the best masking for this job. I masked only the top of the stripe and painted the green with two coats, sanded between coats like the hull. This technique did not work as well with the red for the bottom. I masked the red with Tamiya tape as before and painted the first coat with Testors Model Master Flat Insignia Red. After drying it looked bad, as expected, since this was only the first coat. I wet sanded the paint with 600 grit and added a little thinner to the red paint. After it dried it was apparent that it would take many coats of paint to achieve satisfactory coverage but with a globed on look. I decided spraying was the best way to get it right. The bottom was masked off and Testors Flat Red spray was used with satisfactory results.