tracks

[paintingdeamon]

hi every one ,

my first post here , in a few days i hope to get some GHQ tanks not sure what ill buy but it wil be a german pack and an alied one
painting wil start very soon after that but i was wondering wat is your preferd track color and way to paint them

thanks Harold

[tstockton]

paintingdeamon,

Welcome to "our little corner of the world"! The more, the merrier! (especially when, somday, you post pics of your micro armor... hint hint )

There are several different "schools of thought" on track color here -- pick the one you like best, or [even better] choose the one that suits you the best! My personal choice is a dark reddish-brown for my base color. I paint mine with Testors Model Master Acrylics 4797 - Panzer Schokoladenbraun - I think this roughly translates to "armor chocolate brown". My painting routine generally falls in this order --

1. Primer
2. Base color
3. Tracks
4. Dark wash
5. Details
6. Drybrushing lighter color
7. Rust / weathering
8. Final protective coat

The track color, applied in Step 3, gets darkened in the crevasses with the dark wash, highlighted with the drybrushing, a little "rust" and/or "mud" with the weathering... then I "top it off" with a very light "rubbing" with a Berol Prismacolor PC949 Metallic Silver colored pencil, to show worn edges, etc.

But... this is just what "works for me". I know others have different ways of doing tracks, which are just as good as mine.

Hope this helps -- and welcome to the board!!

Regards,
Tom Stockton

Click here to go to my micro armor pages on my website...

[Extra Crispy]

There are some great tutorials on painting over at www.intobattle.com and he suggests painting the tracks a rust color and then dry brushing with a metallic steel color. This is the technique I use and like very much.



Welcome aboard!

[intobattle]

I've also used Vallejo Olive Drab mixed with a little Hull Red to produce a darker looking track (if you don't fancy the rust color)....then drybushed with Natural Steel.

Good luck!

Tanner

[tstockton]

For those of you who've seen these pics before, my apologies...

But to help illustrate what I've done, here are a couple of pictures which might help to show how "my" tracks come out... first a couple of MT-LB's:





And then, a quintet of Shermans:




Regards,
Tom Stockton

[Mk 1]

Gotta love those pics. Mmmm-MM them T-35s look good enough to eat! And the MT-LBs and brand-new M4A1 early version Shermans are just spanking good.

As has been said, there is no "right" versus "wrong". You should do a little experimenting with various techniques ... as described here, or that you develop yourself.

I have spent a fair bit of time doing research on real tanks. Part of the same fascination that brings me to micro-armor and wargaming. What I've learned is that tracks come in two basic colors: bare metal or black. But tracks, on tanks in the field, wind up in one basic color: dirty/rusty. All of the techniques that you see here try to mimic this.

Most nations in WW2 used bare metal for their tank tracks. Soviet, British, French, Italian tracks should be bare metal.

The Germans evidently painted their bare metal tracks black sometimes, an approach which doesn't make a whole lot of sense as the paint was quickly worn off when the tracks were ground around in the dirt (as was their purpose in life). But spare tracks on racks on the tank may have still been black long after the actual running tracks had the majority of the paint worn off. This painting of black tracks seemed to be more common on smaller AFVs and earlier in the war. Half-tracks, Pz I, 2, 3 and 4. Tiger tracks appear to have been mostly bare metal. (I can easily accept being over-ruled on anything I say about German armor, as that is not my specialty.)

US Army vehicles sometimes had bare metal tracks. Most of the tanks that went to North Africa had bare metal tracks. The M18 Tank Destroyer used bare metal tracks exclusively. But most other US tanks transitioned to metal tracks with rubber pads during and after the North African campaign. And US Halftracks operated on rubber tracks (not even metal with rubber pads, but rubber -- overgrown rubber-band style) throughout the war.

(Most western AFVs have moved to rubber-pads in the modern era. But I shall focus on WW2 vehicles here.)

What I have observed is that all tracks (and most running gear) quickly accumulate a heavy coat of dirt and rust over most any bare metal or rubber. But then the wear of running the tracks wears off that coating, revealing the underlying bare metal or rubber.

So the general approach I use (as to many others, with approaches that may be similar or different) is to try to give a view of the underlying color on the portions of the track that would come into contact with the ground and or with the moving parts of the tanks, and leave everything else dirty / rusted.

For me, that means bare metal tracks are metallic silver, and rubber-padded or rubber tracks are black. And both are dirty/rusted.

Here are some examples of tanks I have known ...


Here is a Soviet T-34 with characteristic bare metal tracks.


The US Army M18 TD had bare metal tracks.


The US Army M10 TD had rubber pads on its tracks.


The US Army M5A1 Stuart had rubber pads on its tracks.

I seek much the same affect as mentioned by TStockton and Extra Crispy above. But my technique is a reverse of theirs.

I paint the track in its proper base color. For bare metal tracks that means a metallic silver. I currently use Poly-S "Graphite", which is a dark silver. I've used other silvers too. My favorite was Poly-S "Oxidized Aluminum", but I can't find that anymore. For rubber tracks (US halftracks) or ruber-padded tracks (most US Army tanks) that means black. I use Poly-S "Oily Black", which is black with a bit of gray and brown in it.

I then do a heavy wash of low-diluted Poly-S "Rust" on the track and the running gear. Sometimes for a desert vehicle I'll do a wash of Poly-S "Mud" or "Khaki".

Occasionally I'll do a dry-brushing of a lighter silver, like Poly-S "Chrome" or "Metallic Silver". But not always.



Here are examples of my results for bare metal tracks on a Soviet T-34 and some KVs.


Here is an example of my results for rubber traks on US Shermans.

So try a few. See what you like. Post some pics. We do love to see 'em.

[pushbike]

My technique is nice and quick.
after washing with black i paint the tracks withVallejo German Camo black Brown.
I kind of shadowy brown then simply scrape with a scapel blade to show wear on the exposes links. then testors dull cote. This is my latest and least frustrating method.
Tracks can be a pain to paint.

Not the best track picture but it gives you the idea.

[tstockton]

Mk I said:

I use Poly-S "Oily Black", which is black with a bit of gray and brown in it.

This touches on a rather important visual point in modeling in almost any scale --

Don't use black "straight out of the bottle"!

In almost any modeling scale black is TOO black! Many model lines carry what could be called a rather dark gray (or grey for our British friends! ) -- colors such as scale black, weathered black, etc. The problem with black is it is too dark -- it ends up looking more like a hole, with little if any detail being seen. The only place I use black "straight out of the bottle" is to "pick out" the tops of the smoke stacks on my ship models. Anywhere else -- I either use it as the pigment in a wash, or I use one of the scale blacks.

Here is a picture of one of my 1:1200 scale ships which may serve to illustrate the difference...



(Please forgive the somewhat-odd "color cast"; the hull is a pale gray, while the "wood" decks are Polly S Aged Concrete... concentrate more on the areas painted black...) The turret tops are Polly S Scale Black, while the "inside" of the stacks are Polly S Black -- notice how much darker the "holes" are! After some experimenting with the different "blacks", I now use a scale black for any surface that needs to be painted "black". I find it to be very noticable in scale modeling -- and the "smaller" the scale, the more noticable it is!

Regards,
Tom Stockton