Middle East Wars (1967’s to Present) Set

The Middle East from the Six-Day War onward

Sand, dust and sun made the Middle Eastern battlefields the most distinctive arena of the second half of the twentieth century in terms of color. Arab armies received equipment from Soviet stores in its factory green finish and oversprayed it to desert tones in the field, while Israeli units used a lighter gray that hides better on sun bleached terrain than brown does. Vehicles taken over, captured and put back into action were mixed together in the process, so a single photograph of a column can carry several shades at once.

Set contents

• Eight bottles of 17 ml with a dropper cap
• Soviet green in its factory form and an olive brown tone to go with it
• Two desert shades, a yellow sand and an ivory for the lightest areas
• Two brown tones for oversprays and for earthy dirt
• A light blue gray for equipment that was not camouflaged to desert tones

Working with the paint

These are acrylic paints intended first of all for an airbrush. The consistency is set so that shaking the bottle and spraying without thinning at a pressure of around one atmosphere is usually enough. Opacity grows with the number of coats, so a few light passes are better than one heavy one. The paints suit a brush as well, but over larger areas it pays to add a drop of thinner and to work in one direction.

Desert camouflage lives on unevenness. Lay the base darker, then spray the middle of large areas and the upper edges with the same shade plus a touch of ivory. That creates a difference which, together with dust, gives the impression of bleached paint once dry. The dropper cap also allows measuring out drop by drop, so the ratio of a mixed blend can be repeated a week later.