Colors for My Sherman?

Modeling Subjects Armor
1

The saga of my first tank continues…

So by now I’ve painted my sherman OD and need to apply a winter camo pattern. I’m hoping I can get some advice for colors, especially for the weathering.

  1. Is the white camo pattern “white” or is it more of a dirty white/grey? Should I just airbrush it white and then dirty it up with weathering?

  2. What color should I use for my wash on top of the como’d tank? Dark OD, black, sepia? I have heard that sepia or sepia darkened with some black works well over camo patterns (thanks to djmodel’s tutorial!). Any ideas? I guess my problem is that I have two very different colors to deal with (OD and white).

  3. What color should I use for the drybrushing? Once again my problem here comes from having an OD and white camo pattern to drybrush over.

As this is my first tank and first attempt at weathering, any suggestions about the specific colors I require are very welcome!

Once again, many thanks! [:)]

Jim

2

  1. I’ve seen many different methods for applying whitewash to the model. Everything from spraying a very light layer of paint, using whiteout, drybrushing the whitewash on, pastel chalks, washes with thinned white paint. The methods are quite numerous. You need to find the one that gives you the best results. If you have an old kit laying around, give it a splash of O.D. and experiment until the results are what you want.

  2. I never do washes so best I don’t answer.

  3. I’d still drybrush with steel or aluminum to highlight.

3

I was told by an old tanker that the ‘whitewash’ was made up of what ever could be found… some pretty odd formulas to include stuff like chalk, whey, etc. Most of the time, this was applied by the crew using brushes, brooms, rags, or what ever they could find.
So, I’d imagine you could use a brush, cotton swab (new…watch out for ‘fuzzies’), or what ever to achieve the pattern you’d like. If your crew was lucky, they may have found a camo unit or engineer company willing to use an air brush with real paint! Who knows! Have fun with it, you have a lot of latitude to work with!!
My personal drybrush preference would be olive drab to indicate that the whitewash has worn through. A ‘lowlight’ rather than a highlight.

Ron

4

Thanks for the info guys. I like the idea of “lowlighting” with OD to show the base color coming through the camo, plus a bit of steel for wear and tear. Maybe in the next couple of weeks I’ll have something to show off!

Jim [:)]

5

When I did my Stug, I painted it overall with Testor’s Acryl gray primer for my white camo then dry brushed heavily with panzer gray. Topped it off with a little steel and then finished with some graphite rubbed on to tone down the steel. I didn’t use any wash on it. I like it and it won a 3rd place at our local show.