



Like the KV-1 under construction right now I never intended to do a build thread on this as most of the time I only do them so that the customer can see the progress of their model in real time. So please excuse the lack of pics in the beginning. Most of this thread will deal with this paint job.

This pic shows the start of the camo, base is RAL 7028 aus DGIII, now hard edge RAL 8012 (lightened with a little pink)

Next RAL 6011 (lightened with blue) is cut into the pattern but not randomly, it must look like its own camo pattern.

You will make errors, see above, you see my pattern made an "eye" or "island", don't allow these to exist, after your first mock up of the brown (8012) you should go back over it and fix your spacing and errors like this with the base color. I airbrushed the base but after that, the whole thing is painted by brush due to the pattern being hard edged.

Notice that the base color "island" has been fixed on the turret and the RAL 6011 is on, please remember that this camo is a slow methodical process of switching between the three colors, adding some here and there balancing the three colors and pattern.
Also some of you may think already that the green is too blue and it does look bizarre right now but this is done to fade the tank evenly before the Magic Grime goes on, it will filter and change the hue of the colors, if the colors were richer now, latter they would be to dark. A good thing to know is what shade fades to what shade, for example the Dark Yellow would fade to a lighted off white tan color, the brown goes rust color and the green goes blue. So mixing in these colors with little white will give you the right shade. I play with the pallet (styrene sheet below the tank) until I get three shades that compliment each other and none over power the other.

Next is the dots, less is more, the most important is the spacing, now I know that the Germans did not measure between dots and there are lots of examples of them looking sorta random - But - if you follow a rough pattern you will be happier with the end result. I start with three dots in a rough triangle, now I will try to copy this spacing through out the tank.

These dots will be shrunk in some cases as some are to big, I use a make-up applicator that is similar to a Que-tip and though it makes nice dots some are to big, some dots will be removed all together.
Lots more to come!