German „Red Primer” AFV | panel lighting set

German factory red and its graduation

A large part of German combat vehicles left the works at a time when there were neither the materials nor the hours of labor left for a final camouflage. Vehicles drove off in the anti-corrosion primer alone, or with areas hastily oversprayed, and it is exactly that look this palette is aimed at.

Its core consists of four tones that follow one another from the darkest to the lightest. Brown Primer Shadow belongs in the shaded corners under the fenders and at riveted joints, Red Primer Base serves as the overall base, Red Primer Flash goes onto the edges turned toward the light, and Red Primer Torrid forms the highest accents on horizontal surfaces. The graduation is prepared for the panel lighting technique, in which the surface is divided up according to how the light falls before any dirtying is done.

The ends of the scale are completed by Jet Black to RAL 9005 and Traffic White to RAL 9016. The black suits preshading and deepening the deepest places, the white lightening the highest edges and mixing intermediate tones if you need a transition finer than the basic four offer.

All six bottles come from the water-thinnable acrylic Red Line. They are applied with an airbrush in light coats, building the graduation up gradually, with the last coat thinned the most.

If you are building a vehicle with an open body, the same scale comes in inside as well, because the anti-corrosion layer was commonly left in the cargo area with no further paint. It is better to build the transitions between the steps up in several passes and to thin the very last coat so that it stays translucent.