Hey Guys,

I've been working on a sherman and its about to be done except for the tracks. Thats where the 'problems' start. I've been searching on this forum to find a good way to paint realistic tracks and I believe I've found a very nice one!

Track Painting by Per-Erik Kristiansen

I've bought the stuff he mentioned and got to work following his instructions. But even before starting I noticed something about the Trackprimer. It didnt seem to have the same color as his track primer has. So I've mailed him asking what I've missed. Looking at the photo it seemed to me he kind of thnned it very much and sprayed it over lightly. But I wasn't sure. Up to now he hasn't responded so I'm putting the matter on to you guys. Can you tell me what i'm missing or what I'm doing wrong?

Cheers Remi

Do you have a picture of the track color you are painting? I compared the pic color to a bottle I have and it looks the same.

this is a guess, but I think that yes, he thinned it more than you did. panzer aces colors need a lot (a lot!) of thinning before they can be airbrushed, so maybe that's what you need to do.

Hey Guys,

I've been quite busy these days. I've been unable to take a picture of it. I will give it a go when I'm back home. It is about the same color as the rust color from Revell.

Does the track need to have a certain color? because the rubber tracks from Dragon are usually kind of Yellowish and those from trumpeter are black etc etc?

Vallejo paint needs distilled water right?

Cheers Remi

Hey,
well, tracks should have a certain color, but I think that's not what you are asking about. DML tracks are yellowish, and made of "dragon styrene", and are more easy to work with, and paint. I am not familiar with trumpeter tracks, so I'd check the booklet to see of it's a similar type (made of styrene) or vinyl. if it's vinyl, throw it away. this kind of tracks is annoying to use, and almost impossible to paint (at least from my experience).

The correct color for tracks differs, depending on the type and what you want to achieve. if you want a warn out look, go for brown-rust color for metal parts, and black gray for rubber parts. for a new look, go for metallic / black for metal parts and rubber for rubber parts. you can go wild with weathering as well, again, depending on what you want to achieve. the link you have provided has some useful information in it, so have another look.

before painting with vallejo i'd recommend you first primer the tracks. then, dilute vallejo with vallejo thinner if you want to airbrush them. i have had bad experience spraying water diluted vallejo colors (the airbrush clogged almost instantly). if you hand brush, you can try with water.

Hey Matan,

How rude of me not to reply earlier. I've been working on the tracks using the track primer. And I've noticed that before using the primer I needed to make sure that the track has a black base color. Now it looks just nice using the wash and pigments...

Cheers Remi