Beige/ Light Brown Canoes?

[Gary]

Hi folks, I'm hoping someone out there might help me with any photo of a wooden canvas canoe painted either beige, light brown or close to that? I'm restoring a Peterborough Champlain circa early 1940's for a friend and I'm hoping to convince them to have me paint it close to the above to compliment the cherry seats, decks, thwarts, and gunwales I'm using. I've searched the internet and can't seem to find anything like that. Hope someone here has used something like this colour so I can show him a finished canoe?
Thanks for any help, Gary

 

[Dave Osborn]

Painted this at customer request.

 

[Michael Grace]

HI Gary. There don't seem to be many brown or beige canoes around but here are a couple:

Kirby paint web site

I've used Kirby paint and been pleased with it. You would phone them because they did not have much of a web presence, but recently I took a look at their new and much improved web site. https://kirbypaint.com/ Oh, my! The first thing you see on the homepage is an ABS plastic Old Town...

forums.wcha.org

Social Media Images

REFLECTIONS: Member Jim Wilson framed this striking shot on the Oswego River, in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, in the spring of 2011. This beautiful canoe is a 17 foot long Old Town OTCA model in AA (or top) grade. It was restored by member Mike Leone. The canoe was purchased from in 1940 and...

forums.wcha.org

The latter one above is post #463, third post down on this page of Social Media Images.

Color is a wholly a matter of taste. Personally brown and beige just don't do anything for me on a wooden canoe; they just seem bland (to me). Contrast between the red, yellow and brown tones of the wood is nice and I think it always has been appreciated - hence the large numbers of green, red, blue and white canoes. According to information gleaned by Benson Gray from Old Town build Records some years ago, green canoes accounted for at least 53% of Old Town's output, with red making up at least 13% more, white another 8%. Brown and beige canoes must have been accounted for somewhere in the 18% of "other" colors, none of which rose to more than 2% of production.

http://www.wcha.org/catalogs/old-town/records/colors.jpg

All that said, choose what you like best. Sometimes I'm surprised. I never thought I'd want a yellow canoe, but I changed an Old Town 15/50 back from dark green to its original bright yellow just because I was bored with so many greens, and I've been very surprised how much I like it. I've always been the same with cars, generally thinking I don't like brown or beige, but the recent Desert Sand Toyota Tacoma looks nice to me and I once saw a beige Corvette that was gorgeous.

Michael

 

[Gary]

Thanks Mike, Dave, nice paint job Dave by the way. I hear you on the red and green canoes. It seems that is all I ever paint. Thus the interest in trying something. else. We'll see?
Gary

 

[1905Gerrish]

Gary,
Here is an old mystery guide canoe I completed about 10 years ago that I brought to the boat show over the weekend.
Zack

 

[Gary]

Thanks Zack, nice looking canoe and although I like the colour it looks like this canoe will be painted with Epifanes #23, deep red. I'll post a few pictures when it's finished.
Gary

 

[MGC]

Epifanes has a lot of good looking brown color options. I have a can of red brown that I plan to contrast with a cream colored Epifanes.
I see no problem with using more colors than the typical reds, greensand blues that we tend to be stuck on.
Brown may not be the period correct color for an older canoe that is being restored more traditionally but paint is such an easy thing to change. Why not step a bit outside the box?

 

[dogbrain]

Here's a Canadian UFO I fixed up a few years ago. I chose this color as a base to make it look like birchbark, so it no longer looks like this. The tan color is a bit over saturated in the picture as it was close to sunset.

Mark

 

[Rob Stevens]

The first (5ft long, initially meant to be a cradle but she floated/paddled it) canoe I built for our first grandchild is painted "iron oxide red" ie. primer. (as chosen by her mother). I call her "Rusty".

 

[MGC]

Rob, in the background on the shore there is a brown and green hull. What are the odds?
Rust looks good.
I have used an Epifanes burgundy several times and it looks very stunning.

 

[Andre Cloutier]

Mike, it does look fantastic. After many coats, eh!

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

The latter one above is post #463

That's my canoe. It's painted with Epifanes #26 "Buff" on top and #34 "Chocolate Brown" on bottom. Here's another picture from a different angle against a white car:

BTW, as a site Xenforo technical matter, you can post a link directly to any message in a thread (such as this one's #12) by clicking on its number in the the thread, which will put the message's specific URL in your address bar. Then, paste that URL into your text entry box, which will then open your link directly to message #12 for readers.

 

[Gary]

Thanks again to everyone who posted pictures for me of beige/brown canoes. Although I intend on doing one some day this particular canoe with new cherry woodwork suited Epifanes #23 deep red better. As promised here is a picture of it finished and what I started with.
Gary

 

[patrick corry]

Oh my, that looks much better!! Well done.