Model A Coloring Book

Coloring Book

Ever wonder what your Model A would look like in a different color? I have. I wanted to use my computer's "Paint" program to change the colors of a Model A photo. Using the paint can tool, I'd pick a neat color and "dump" paint into the Lower body, then choose a different color for the Upper body, and finally a third color into the Reveals.

To make this happen, I scanned a side-view of a 1930 Fordor from the "Ford Model A Restoration Manual A-1", published by FoMoCo in 1955. I opened the photo into Adobe Photoshop, removed all the measurement lines, and then carefully made some "holes" in the lines that make up the doors, hood, etc. This will let the paint "flow" between the adjacent body pieces. Then I saved it as a JPEG file. Then I opened my Paint program, found the paint can tool, picked purple for the lower body and green for the upper body and decided I'd better stick with one of Henry's original combinations (see TQ-paint.html for a list of original combinations.)

Before you can color the photo, you first have to copy it from this web page to your computer - here's how:

Windows computers: right click on the image and choose "SAVE TO DISK", give it a name and place on your computer (like in "My Documents".)

Macs: press the mouse button while pointing to it and select "SAVE THIS IMAGE AS".

When your web session is done, open your painting program:
Windows users can use Paint (inside the ACCESSORIES folder); Mac and Windows users can use Photoshop or any other painting program that can open JPEG files.

I'm curious if anyone besides me is interested in doing this, so if you give this a try and enjoy it (and perhaps want to see other body styles), please send me e-mail with your feedback! My address is: Rick Black. Enjoy!