I feel that it's easy to over darken olive drab/Russian green with typical brown filters, so wondering what some of you do to your models in these colors?

I've gone a few shades, sometimes more, lighter so I have "room" to weather with filters and washes.

I paint my Russian armor with Tamiya (or similar) Field Grey so the wash/filter doesn't over darken the base. NATO tanks are painted a lighter green (NATO green with buff or sand added) - same result with washes/filters. I don't get hung up on colors. Once saw a photo of T-72s from same unit - all had different tones of green.

I think this is a fairly valid comment, up to a point. It amuses me when I come upon a group of individuals at a contest table discussing the "correct" color of a model. The reality (based on my 30 years of military service) is different batches of paint, different climatic conditions, application techniques, and usage rates will all have an effect on paint. Sometimes these effects are quite striking. On the other hand, paint colors are designed to "initially" be a uniform color. So it also depends on where in the lifetime of the paint scheme one finds the vehicle. I'd caution folks to stay away from photos of "salvage" vehicles, or "museum" vehicles when portraying "operational" vehicles, as this is where colors become "muddled" for accuracy. I've found starting with a lighter shade under heavier weathering/washes will often have a nice artistic and even realistic effect. The opposite is true in cases where there's less weathering. Modelers often refer to this as "Scale effect" and it's usually associated with highlights of contrasting light and dark colors. In reality, it's usually much less pronounced on the real item--but looks good on a model to bring out hidden detail. Another issue is the conditions models are viewed under--they can appear a lot different on the workbench, display case or contest table depending on the lighting. It's long been my opinion that we should be less concerned with the base color than we are with the final color under specific lighting conditions. I don't do Russian Armor, but I do US vehicles and German equipment occasionally, in those cases, I often use a lighter or darker shade of green oil paint to get the effect I want.
VR, Russ

We often did paint repairs with Krylon spray paint over brushed on O.D. CARC. Vehicles sent to third shop for major repairs would be back with spray painted CARC and it was a different shade of original factory applied O.D., Brown and black because the older paint was sun bleached, had ground in sand, dust and volcanic ash lightening the colors. Some of our vehicles weren't a constant shade due to the different ages of painted areas. I've lightened areas and colors simulating sun lightened paint and painted areas as if just repaired and left areas of the factory color used to paint them

Agree with what others have said. Start with a much lighter shade as it will become several degrees darker depending on your weathering. I've been playing around with filters lately and have had some pleasing results. Filters don't necessarily have to be colors you would expect. I have used blue over green, orange over sand/dessert yellow, grey over green, and several more variations. All impart a unique shade/color variation and are particularly effective on monotone schemes.

This might be a silly question but why does weathering automatically darken the colour? I can see that it would if a dark colour is used to weather it (der) but surely not if a light colour (simulating dust, for example) is used.

Not clear what period of Russian kit the original post refers to but contemporary reports of 4BO indicate it to have been pretty dark initially (the KV-1 sent to the US was the basis of one report).

Robert-Good question. Weathering does not automatically darken a given color. However I think that most of us make the assumption that one will usually use a dark wash. You are correct that if a lighter wash is used i.e. a sandy color, the original color will not darken.

Thanks for the replies - its actually a T34 76 mod 1943 and even trying out the white/black technique, I went a little too dark given I'm using brown wash for green vehicles.

What would bring out the details with darkening too much ? Grey?