Light Jeep Or Dark Jeep?

Armor/AFV WWII Allied
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Tamiya makes doth light and dark olive drab paints, and I have a Verlinden book showing various pictures of WW2 softskins, both with the light and dark green colors. Is the lighter green the earlier one and the darker green the later, or vice versa?

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Take your pick!

colors
colors300×242 77.9 KB

:smiley: :canada:

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First mistake: American OD is not green :slight_smile: Especially the Second World War version was more like brown with a greenish hue, and the more the paint weathered, the browner it became.

Tamiya’s XF-62 OD is not a great paint for the Second World War version of this colour, being far too green (20+ years ago, it was better). I don’t know about the two different TS- and LP-range colours, as I’ve never used them. However, because the colour varied in the real world due to all kinds of reasons, I’d say that as long as you have OD that’s more a brown than a green, your colour is not wrong.

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Hi
In use, the OD soon faded out, or ‘softened’. I too have umpteen pots of Tamiya’s OD, over years !, but they’re nearly all different! Anything straight out is too dark, so add sand, buff, yellow NOT white to tone down for a more scale colour. Even a top overspray to lift it in a lighter shade makes it go more 3D and realistic. Add dust and dirt, even more change. N.B. a gloss coat pre-transfers WILL DARKEN it. I usually apply over a black primer, even that needs to be allowed for. Cheers.

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You also have to adjust for scale. When used out of the bottle, Tamiya’s OD looks black on 1/72 scale vehicles! :slightly_frowning_face:
:smiley: :canada:

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That depends on who you ask. Many claim that colours need to be lightened to compensate for scale, many others claim this is nonsense. Both sides support their arguments with calculations and experiments.

Me, I think the important thing when painting models is to have a good idea of what the real colour looked like (both in theory and in practice) and then just take or mix a colour that fits your mental image. For example, if you know that American OD was a medium green-brown that faded more towards brown as it aged, you can choose one of the huge range of model colours that are sold as “olive drab” which fits your idea of “medium green-brown” while avoiding using one of the many olive green paints that are also sold.

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