then we moved on to a grey base coat and a top layer
then we invented panel lining in black over a grey base coat
and the inverse, a black base and a mottling effect in grey inside each panel
Now I see how moddelers are turning towards yellow mottling in some area’s
Myself, i am testing the combination of a very dark grey base, lighter grey mottling, and panel lining with a dark version of the top coat because I find the contrast between completely black panel lines and a light top colour to starck.
Coming to my question, have you already doen similar experiments, and what do you think of the result?
I’ve been priming my vehicles with a black base for years. Some sort of primitive pre-shading in my head… The theory is that if I miss anything, at least the grey plastic won’t show through. I use Humbrol still, that’s how old school I am. Years ago as a teen, I used to follow the Verlinden method with the black wash over the top of the colours (see, I told you I was old), but that hasn’t done it for me for a long time. I’m not a fan of the heavy weathering route which is so current and based on observation of vehicles in scrapyards or old earth moving equipment. IMHO these examples are not accurate. I chiefly model late WW2 German, so most of the armoured vehicles in that genre had very short lives and didn’t get a chance to get tatty. I was a fan of the late Tony Greenland’s method. I use an adaption of it formed from years of figure painting. I use a dark brown wash on Dunkelgelb, followed by “aggressive” dry brushing, then tone it down with a thin overspray of the base colour again.
I use black primer. After that it is an artistic process, the goals often change, and anything can happen. There will me mottled coats, shadow effects, highlight effects, artistic dirt in all sorts of ways, rust, and random gick. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes things do not. Green and olive drab models always turn out the best. Panzer gray models are really tough to get right. Sand colored models are somewhere in between. White is easy to mess up.
When I was younger, I identified four major schools of model finishing: Greenland, Tamiya, Velinden, Zaloga. Today I add one more school: Goblin. Every model falls into one of those schools or Paint Bomb. Paint Bomb is the starter school. Sometimes, I set out with the goal of finishing a model in a specific school just to have examples of that school in my collection.