Hobby color - khaki

The earthy tone of field gear

Khaki is the color of dusty earth and faded cloth, a shade that appeared on the battlefield across armies and periods. On a model it fits wherever the surface is meant to look dusty and worn: infantry uniforms, tarpaulins over cargo beds, packs, covers, straps, tent sections, sandbags, deposits on treads.

A strong point for figure painters

Water thinnable acrylics are the easiest of all technologies to work with on figures. They dry quickly enough to let you build up a gradual transition of light and shadow, but not so quickly that a stroke dries before it can be blended. This shade works excellently as the mid tone, lightened by adding sand and shaded with brown.

Application

Under the brush the paint settles without pronounced strokes, while on large areas an airbrush and thinning to roughly the consistency of milk pay off. Earthy shades tend to have a coarser pigment which settles at the bottom especially readily, so stirring is a must before every load. A prepared palette lasts longer if you moisten it from time to time.

Fine-tuning on the model

The coat alone looks flat, and only picking out the folds and a light pass with a dry brush give the cloth depth. At the end a flat varnish is useful to even out the surface, along with a fine pigment in the recesses. Always close the container carefully, because water thinnable paint left open dries into a hard crust on the rim of the neck. It also pays to keep a wet palette on hand, on which the shade stays usable considerably longer than on a dry tile, and that saves a lot of repeated mixing when painting a whole group of figures.