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Should be pointed out that some units hand painted the black and sand elements or ended up doing repainting by hand. Also as indicated some units improvised color and patterns depending on availability of paint and manuals.
Some National Guard vehicles substituted brown for the sand. Others had bad paint that weathered poorly with the dark green being very brownish or yellowish. Then there were mix and match schemes depending on where spare parts came from.
I handpainted a deuce and a half truck and watched them repaint our armory tank in the oddest mismatch of MERDC with the NATO colors. Looked like a Bundeswehr tank at the end of it.
Then there were M113s where the brush marks were visible from across the road. 
While all of this is true, I will caviate it by saying in the 2/11 Cav, from 1976-80, while I was there, brush painting was kept to an absolute minimum for our equipment. The large swaths of greens and browns were almost exclusively done with an air gun, while tan and black were often (but not always) done with spray cans. Painting and seasonal re-painting were accomplished in an assembly line at the Troop, Company and Battery level. When a rebuilt or new track came from the depot, it was often painted in basic green, and would get the brown, tan, and black colors added at the unit motor pool, unless it was received in the field, repaint was then accomplished when we got back to garrison. We used the FM paint guide to paint with, so the patterns matched fairly closely, but often times there was some "artistic license" by individual paint teams, depending on "how far behind" in the painting process you were, which necessitated "short cuts". Typically, there might be some masking with "butcher" paper, but things like headlights, marker lights, aux antenna bases, vision blocks, etc. would be masked by smearing axle grease on them which could be easily wiped off after painting. Our paint came in 1 and 5 gallon cans (more often in the 1 gallon size). It was often thinned with MOGAS if we ran out of thinner, which could lead to some slight variation in color and sheen, and occasionally this would lead to premature "fading" of the colors. Spray paint came in quart OD painted cans (black and tan, although it came in all the colors for touch up). Usually a designated team at Troop level would paint the vehicle with brown and green, while the crew did the masking and the painting with spray cans. Very occasionally, a brush would be used to "fix" something or paint something if it was out of the regular painting cycle, so yes, you would see variation-- usually these were vehicles that had been received and painted hastily. As th XO of HHT, I had a broken down 5 ton which had been a "hanger queen for over a year (that would not happen with a tank or M113). When we finally got it running again, we decided to repainted it too to make it look presentable (it had been in an accident several years earlier) so it was a combination of spray and hand brushed colors-- but everyone in the Squadron could pick out old 444, because it had a "unique" paint job. And yes, that would occasionally happen to other vehicles, but with re-painting twice a year, most vehicles were quite uniform in thier appearance. I think it just depends on the unit, and time available for painting.
VR, Russ
