I have tried several different colors to create a woodland camo paint scheme for modern US armor. Just wondering what colors people would recommend that looks realistic. I have the most trouble getting the “brown” and “green” to look good. Most of the kits I have bought give a wide variety of what colors to use. Italeri, Dragon, Revell all have different recommendations. Any replies are appreciated!
All the colors and patterns are set forth in a document called COLOR, MARKING AND CAMOUFLAGE PAINTING OF MILITARY VEHICLES, CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT, AND MATERIALS HANDLING EQUIPMENT; TB 43-0209
I picked up a copy somewhere off the internet; don’t remember exactly where… I was going to post a link to the Army’s website, but it looks like it’s been password protected. It’s a big file (almost 16 MB), so e-mailing it is out.
Plugging “TB 43-0209” into Google and Yahoo does yield a number of results that look useful.
In terms of the two colors you specified, they list brown as FS 30051 and green as FS 34094; FS stands for Federal Standard… Testors’ Model Master and Model Master Acryl lines both should provide either these exact colors or something very similar.
Best match is Tamiya NATO Green, NATO Brown and NATO Black. These colors are right on.
Unless your piece just rolled off of the assembly line an exact match is not necessary. Remember that most vehicles are subjected to hard labor outdoors. They are exposed to the rigors of the daily grind. Sun, Wind, Dirt, Dust. Environmental exposure. All fo these things lend subtle shifts to the colors.
Even amongst newly delivered vehicles from the same manufacture I have seen variances in the shades of colors. I understand that the FS is the MIL-SPEC color. In the ideal world every vehicle would have the same shades. In the real world I can attest that this is not the case.
Tamiya’s NATO Black, NATO Brown and NATO Green match the German NATO colours; French and US NATO colours are not the same. For the US, you would be better off using Tamiya’s NATO Black, Olive Green and Red Brown.