WWI BRITISH COLORS MODULATION SET

Four steps of khaki on the tanks of the Great War

The British tracked machines that first crossed the trenches at Flers in 1916 carried an unremarkable brownish coat of paint. The large areas of their rhomboid hulls, however, look dead on a model if they are painted in a single color. Modulation is the answer: the surface is lightened toward the upper edges and toward the places where daylight fell, while the undersides and interiors are kept in darkness.

The set offers exactly that sequence. The darkest brown serves as the shadow in the corners, under the riveted straps and at the track runs. Next comes the base khaki brown, which covers the largest share of the surface. The ocher green lightens the surface, and the lightest earth tone stays on the crowns of the panels and on the upper edges, where the metal shone most.

Recommended procedure

The paints are acrylic, thinned with water and applied above all with an airbrush in thinned layers. The dark tone is laid over the whole surface, the further steps are added in ever smaller windows and the last one only in narrow strips. The resulting transition is then evened out with a light layer of the base color, so that the transitions do not remain visible as stripes.

The set of four also suits wooden fascines, crates and British-made artillery material, where the same tones create a natural scatter. The volume of each bottle is 17 ml, which on a typical 1:35 model lasts for several builds.

The shades can also be used on their own. The ocher green by itself serves as a faded surface on tarpaulins, and the darkest brown as an undercoat beneath rust on the worn edges of riveted plates.