Acrysion - olivová (1)

The olive green of ground equipment

The number in brackets after the name is neither a misprint nor a distinction of packaging: the range offers two olive variants that differ from each other in the warmth of the tone, and this is the first of them. Olive finishes were among the most widespread camouflage colors of the twentieth century: they were worn by American ground equipment of the Second World War, by trucks, artillery, transport crates and most personal equipment. The shade therefore comes into its own as well on an armored vehicle in a large scale as on small accessories in a scene.

Real olive surfaces never stayed uniform. The sun drew them toward gray, dust lightened them and repaints left patches of a different color on the sides. The most natural-looking approach is therefore to lay the base tone on across the whole area and then to spray over it in several places with the same paint lightened by a drop of sand or white.

Application and the work that follows

The binder is thinned with water and the paint is meant for spraying; before you draw it out, the contents of the bottle have to be mixed right from the bottom. Flatter olive surfaces take dry pigments and dust deposits beautifully, but they really hold only on a mature film. Anyone who wants to bring the area to life further can, once it is dry, run a darker glaze over the edges and raised parts and suggest worn spots with the tip of a brush: a metallic sheen on an olive base always reveals the places where the crew touched the machine most often. Suggesting streaks of fuel and oil around the filler caps works in a similar way and gives an olive surface both scale and a story.