Hobby color - hrubá šedá

Gray for dust, concrete and weathered surfaces

On the Hobby Color palette this tone stands apart from the camouflage grays that aircraft airframes are sprayed with. The neighboring codes in the same group carry names such as mud, oily or soot color, and that gives away what the shade is for: additional soiling of a finished build, not a base coat.

It suits best where a surface is meant to look dry and flat. Concrete surfaces of dioramas, dusty deposits in a wheel well and on a chassis, the dusty underside of armor after a run down a field track, the outline of settled dust around rivets and panels, weathered wood or the rendering of buildings by a railroad. On an aircraft it serves to suggest marks on the tires and in the places where people climb into the cockpit.

There are three techniques and they can be combined. A dry brush pulls out edges and riveting; heavily thinned paint sprayed from a greater distance lays down a fine dusty veil; stippling and blending with a damp brush creates irregular patches that look more natural than a continuous area.

Restraint pays off. Grime should be legible only in the places where it arises in reality; a model grayed uniformly loses contrast and comes across as flat.

In layers with other products

On its own this gray does only part of the job. Convincing grime is built up in layers: first a dark wash that runs into the seams and brings out the shape, then this light coat laid where dust settles, and finally a dry pigment on the edges and lower surfaces. Between the steps it pays to seal the surface with varnish, so that the previous effect does not dissolve during the next pass and the modeler can step back at any time.