Scratches on OD paint

Was watching a youtube piece on weathering OD paint on US armor and the modeler was using a darker shade of OD for the scratches. Shouldn’t the scratches be lighter in shade instead of being darker?

I think it would depend on various factors. What made the scratch, eg, brushing up against a piece of stone wall? brick wall? a tree trunk? something else? Does the scratch go all the way through the paint, to the metal below, or is it just on the surface? If so, is it a fresh scratch, or an old one? But yeah, it sounds a little counterintuitive to use a darker color of the surrounding paint to represent the scratch.

Can you share the link to the video? It might help, to see it in the context the presenter used, too.

Maybe scratching paint on ther actual AFV exposes fresh i.e. not faded or dirty paint underneath.

There was a time back when where a decent way to understand things like paint damage, dirt and grime was to go out and look at your car. Not anymore.

That’s a good point, GM, because what I do is to look at things like construction equipment, or metal bits in various locations, like a steel pipe handrail on an set of steps outside, things like.

I agree, the OD paint in WW2 was baked on and very tough, but being a fairly dark color, it will fade in the sun as soon as it comes out of the factory.

It’ll sit in the grounds outside of the factory. It’ll sit in the proving grounds while going through a shakedown drive. It’ll sit in the sun awaiting railloading. It’ll sit in the sun as it travels by train to the port. It’ll sit at the port awaiting ship loading.

It’ll sit in the weather after arriving at port, at the railhead, and in the staging area.

Tanks spend a lot of time in the weather before it ever gets issued to a crew.

Crew drives it through the brush and the outer layer of paint scrapes off. It probably leaves a darker streak where the faded paint has worn away.

All good points mentioned above. I have done scratches on German armor in the past and used a lighter shade of the base coat for the light scrapes.

Here is the piece I saw which is very well done but just wondered about the color question. It makes sense that the lighter weathered paint scratched off will show the darker shade underneath.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-V8__3YzlP0