Knowing absolutely nothing about what colours a ship might be painted I took the easy route and chose to paint the hull of my ship in those suggested by the instructions. So the interior is grey, the upper hull is black and the bit that sits in the water is oxide red. Evidently anti-fouling paint was salmon pink until 1947 and oxide red after that. As my ship is supposed to be from the 40s-50s era I chose oxide red.
Almost every step in the construction of the ship is likely to make painting the exterior of the hull more difficult so I took the unusual step (at least for a railway modeller) of painting it prior to much construction taking place.
While having no straight lines or right-angles to work from is difficult with this model I’m finding trying to decipher the nautical terms in the instructions even more of a challenge. Take this sentence: “Fit the deck until the fore end drops down to 46mm from the stem head”. Well that helps a lot, unless you have no idea what a stem head is! 🙂 Turns out the stem head is the bit of the ship Leonardo and Kate fondled each other adjacent to as they made like figureheads in Titanic, minus the figure! The measurement of 46mm was wrong anyway so it helps to be able to improvise.
Still, it looks very nautical in its new paint but then what do I know? 🙂
Morpeth In O-Scale 
Looks very good. I’ve always thought painting pior to construction would be easier too. I’ll test that theory soon. I’ve a batch of parkside models to be built.