Here's my two bobs, or cents, or whatever ..... (forgive my English, as I am not a native speaker)
A handfull of prototypes designed by Yakovlev OKB between summer 1940 and summer 1941 were painted in black-green camouflage scheme.
AFAIK, there were NO black-green prototypes BEFORE June 1941. (... UTI-26 in the photo was finished in June 1941)
I know that there are some rare photos of production Yak-1 with uniform green, but giving their poor number, it's still to demonstrate that all of them were delivered so. Part of them could have been delivered already camouflaged. But this could be an object of a separate topic.
What is clear is that Yakovlev had his own ideas on camouflage and the power to impose them.
Pre-June '41 I-26 were finished in solid green uppersurface scheme - please have a look at Stepanec's book on Yak-1
Neither Yakovlev nor anyone else would dare (or care, for that matter) to play with camouflage. Do not forget that the black-green camo is a direct result of the Winter War experience + camo scheme testing
Nor could anyone invent grey-grey scheme just like that, and start using it. As I already stated in a previous post, in was a sure path to repercussions. Even in Western countries, do you think UK MAP would accept, say, Spitfire fighters with a totally new and irregular camouflage ? In military, there is always bureaucracy present to a degree... Such experiments were possible only in the field and under very special circumstances (like 1941). Thus, btw, the 1942 grey-grey scheme is, I'm afraid, no more than a mere wish
Seems to me that there is lately a tendency to consider ideas or guesses as hard facts.
PLEASE, do not walk in Pilawski's shoes !