I am working on the Tamiya Panzer II A/B/C and am at the painting stage. I have never modeled a vehicle in panzer grey. What color wash should I use?
Thanks
You have a few options- it’s totally up to you of course, many modelers use a dark brown; raw umber is popular with guys who use oils, and even black but that gets used mostly for pin washes around bolts , rivets and other small details. You may have to try out each color in a small area first. Do you have an old model laying around that you can practice on ? Best of luck !
Rich
A dark gray-blue is fine too, I had seen a mix of Payne Gray and black used at a convention and for me it gave a nice effect, do some tests,are very personal things, it also depends if you do a generalized wash or pin wash , whether you do filters first or not
Yeah definitely an option too
Come to think of it, I use Payne’s gray to put 5 o’clock shadow on my figures, it comes out of the tube looking black but dries lighter. A little goes a long way.
I would stay away from blue. The blue myth comes from colour-shifting old photos and has no real support.
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Yes the blue thing has been debunked I thought over the last several years.
Your color choice should be determined by what you are trying to portray.
Ground up dust pooled around details would be made using a light earth color.
Grease and/or fuel collected around raised details on the engine compartment would be a darker, grimier color.
Dust is the color of dust regardless of the tanks base color, same for grease, fuel, rust etc.
If you zoom in on this one shot you can see I have earth colors for the dirt. Around the suspension where the fender is missing I have grease/grime color with a bit of gloss. Inside the exhaust and on the spare track links on the turret you can see a rust color used.
I would have used these same colors regardless of the base color of the vehicle.
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Yes good point Ken. I see what you did with the various earth tones on your M26(?). Great job by the way
Thanks Richard, it’s a Marines M26A1, Korea. It’s the Dragon kit with a crap ton of work to bring it up to snuff.
Myself, Chris Jerrett, and Anthony Guarderas put together a special issue on US Marine vehicles about four years ago.
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Wow fantastic! I don’t have that issue, gotta get it looks like
Thanks for all the replies. I should have specified this will be an overall wash.
To be honest, knowing that probably wouldn’t have changed my answer too much. Without knowing what you want it to look like, I don’t know what color to advise. Do you want an overall dusty tank? Overall rusty tank? Overall muddy tank?
…or do you want to just put an umber colored sludge wash over the whole thing and wipe it off like the Letterman/Verlinden days?
If the latter, your base color doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to use one at all. Colour washes are a modelling technique so it depends on what you want to achieve.
Study of actual vehicles in service will give an idea of how they really look but I can’t recall ever seeing one with a colour wash over it.