Sunday 3 April 2016

Merkava - Picking a colour

Some progress on the Merkava. Detail on this kit is splendid and abundant. I hope I can do it all justice in the end.
The side skirts can be made in 2 options : 1 big piece or 5 individual pieces. The hooks on the plates have nothing to "hook" on. Meng customer support confirmed they need to be glued on, but I prefer to have them detachable, so I manufactured the extra lips from some flat parts of the sprues.


One of the more difficult parts of any build is choosing the "right" colours (and sticking to my choice). I'm not one to care for people pointing out "That's the wrong shade of gray/green/yellow", but making up my mind can be a difficult process.

Meng calls for Sandy Brown or something Grayish Green. Someone told me they are all painted exactly the same, except that the sun, sand, whatever ... fades the colours to varying degrees.
See the 2 pictures below the instructions. One is sandy-yellow-ish, the other grayish green. They are the exact same panel, shot from a different angle. So, there's definitely a bit of margin to work with.

 

I have a Vallejo primer called "Desert sand", which is too soft and too yellow. (it's actually the colour for US desert vehicles, like the Abrams), but mixed with OD (Olive Drab, my only other non-black primer), it gives a reasonable shade of what I'm looking for.
Afterwards, I decided it still wasn't right, so I experimented further. First by adding brown (Noooo good), then by adding dark yellow, which seemed promising.
I like experimenting with mixing colours. I do *NOT* like cleaning the airbrush however.




The last picture is NOT the final colour, as I changed my mind once it was painted.

1 comment:

  1. IDF has a habit of not using any color that you could expect to find on the shelf. I always thought it was a bit of Israeli humor, just to see if we were paying attention. ;-)

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