"Newbie late war german tank colour question" Topic

Hi,
I'm just starting to build a late german army for use with IABSM. I'm currently painting a platoon of panzer 4s. I bought a can of Plastic Soldier Late War German Dunkelgelb. The colour is quite a light yellow. Every other model I've looked at seems much darker in shade
Am I using the wrong base colour here? Should I use something else or should I be aggressively over painting and leaving little of the base colour visible?
Thanks,
Mike

From what I can remember the yellow on late war German equipment is surprisingly lighter than you would imagine. Once you start applying weathering, the red-brown and green camo, plus a wash overall and the starkness starts becoming less so.

I have a 1/300th armoured division in predominantly dunkelgelb for late 1943 and they look surprisingly ok with just a wash and highlighting.

Yes, once it is camo'd and dirtied up it will look much darker, the base shade is pretty light.

Slap some camo on, get all the running gear muddied up, maybe a brown inkwash, then a dusty highlight and it will look a filthy greenish-brown in no time.

Paint was sent to German units in a form of paste that was to be thinned using gasoline (or what ever was handy). As a result the colors varied a lot. The light color will be fine.

The base dark yellow would not be applied by troops in the field, so the color wouldn't vary that much compared to the brown or green shades.

Also after AUG 1944 camo schemes started to be applied in the factory rather than the field, and would be more uniform both in color and in patterns.

Damon.

I agree – I paint with Dunkelgelb but once you do a bit of wash and weathering and adding in a bit of kit my German tanks look pretty good (well, I think so)

Thanks everyone .
Mike