1:35 German WWII Brush Ambush Camouflage Paint Mask Set

A late-war pattern applied with a brush

Late-war German vehicles left the factory in a dark yellow base and the remaining two shades, olive green and red brown, were added to them by crews or field workshops only on the spot. From the autumn of 1944 small spots of the opposite color were added to this: light dots into dark areas and dark ones into light. From a distance they were meant to imitate sunlight coming through the crowns of trees above a hidden vehicle.

Why a rough edge

This pattern in particular was often applied with an ordinary brush straight from the can, so it had no atomized transition but an irregular, in places almost frayed edge with traces of the bristles. Modelers usually find that more trouble than a sprayed pattern, because painting the small dots by hand ends up either as too regular a grid or as a smear. The template solves the placement and the shape of the spots for you.

No binding regulation

The appearance differed from workshop to workshop and from unit to unit, because nobody prescribed the placement of the spots exactly from above. That is why surviving photographs show vehicles of the same type that look completely different, and the modeler has unusually free rein when choosing a subject.

Procedure and recommendations

First finish the whole three-layer camouflage of the hull, let it dry thoroughly and only then do the spots come. Apply them with thinned paint in several light passes, so that the layer underneath can still be sensed; fully opaque paint looks unnaturally hard. The pattern is meant to cluster more densely on the vertical surfaces of the turret and on the sides, not evenly over the whole vehicle.

The package contains the templates for this one layer. The vehicle and the paints are not in it.