Hello.

This is my first post here. All the builds posted here are awesome. I just picked up the hobby craft challenger 2 which is pretty much the trumpeter kit. I also bought MM British Gulf Light Stone for the main color.

For those of you that have done desert schemes, what base color do you use? Should I use the main color as my base?

I was thinking of this sequence:
prime w/ white
main color as base over entire model
preshade w/ raw umber along crevices and panel lines
lighten the main color and spray the in the center of panels and tone down the preshade.

Hope that makes sense. Then I again this is probably all wrong I did a search but none of the threads helped me. Any suggestions? or point me to a link that covers desert schemes.

Thanks,
Ronnie

Hi Ronnie,
welcome aboard,
I can't help you for the color choice but the process sounds good to me.
Don't forget to create some scratches with green and black colors as the British sand tends to get quickly worn out due to sand and sun.

Olivier

Hi and welcome here

What I did for my Chally is that I painted the tank first the standard green camo and then went over it with the desert yellow like the real tanks. In that way it was easier for me to give the tank a "used" look (= paint chips and scratches)

Good luck with your build

Cheers,

Mat

Mat's technique is good if you want to do scratches. My desert scheme is slightly different.

For the challenger, i actually mixed Tamiya's Desert Yellow with some Flat Yellow. I added a little bit more flat yellow since the British paint scheme is a little more yellowish compared to their US counterparts. As you apply subsequent filters and even the matt clear coat, you will find that the colour lightens up just a little bit.

I dont like scratches on my kit so much hence why you dont really see it on my builds but if you want some, definitely do a dark base coat first.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys!!! And thanks for the quick response and advices.

The green base sounds like a good idea. The reference pics shows the original green underneath the yellow. I have done scratches before but this could be my first If I chicken out I'll go the darkened base route.

Thanks again guys.
Ronnie