"Vallejo paints for French armor camuflage" Topic

Can anyone advise the best Vallejo colors for painting the French three tone camouflage used on their armor in 1940? Thanks,

Terry

search message boards for "french armor". There is a topic from January 09.

January 07 actually. Topic is suspiciously titled "Vallejo for French Armor 1940"

I don't know the Vallejo color codes, but I can tell you that the camouflage on French tanks was most often applied at the factory. Often, several different companies would collectively produce a given tank, like the Char B. This coupled with the rather lax French army instruction on the subject led to a great deal of differentiation.

This site might help you:

link

The H codes are Humbrol codes. You might be able to find a comparison of Vallejo and Humbrol and cross reference.

This site might also help you:

link

The paints are Tamiya.

Just remember, these are largely suggestions. There wasn't a great deal of uniformity.

This is my take link the paints used are at the bottom, a mix of GW and Vallejo.

Lifecolor do a French Khaki Green.
Failing that use Field Grey for the Green, German Cam Medium Brown for the brown, and mix the sand very pale.
Use a rotring pen for the black line demarcation, then varnish.

Good references can be had from the Minitracks Trackstory books.

Gentlemen, my very sincere thanks the help here as it is excellent. I had tried a search before posting but didn't word it to get a hit but did find the post you reference Kelly. I believe this will serve me very well for the armor I am doing.

I will be posting a few questions on hte Germans as well and hope you all can share he same excellent help there too!

Thank you,

Terry

I've been using Vallejo desert sand as a base coat with a wash of brown ink to give it little depth. Highlighted with sand and white then used Vallejo Olive Green and Brown leather as base coats for the other two colours. finished result looks very nice (if I say so myself) :)

If you haven't seen it yet, try to get hold of Steven Zaloga's book on "Blitzkrieg camouflage and markings". It has load of useful info on French camo patterns.

A caution though – Zaloga's book is out of date in many particulars. Anleihers first link is to a site with some more up to date information. Different factories & different batches of tanks had different patterns applied, so much so that the more expert can identify the tank batch & manufacturer for an individual tank from the scheme alone.