Basic colors done!

My friends, may I present to you: not Panzer Grey, not Panzer Denim Blue, but Panzer... Dust? 🤔 

This is the result of many hours of spraying because the model is too large... when I compared it with the Panzer 2 I did a while ago, spraying that little tank took one evening. Interestingly, it's also much easier to imagine the final result and adjust your work process towards the end goal when you're working on a small model. With a monster like this, I was sometimes left wondering what I'm actually trying to accomplish. But as usual, it was the final two layers that made the biggest difference. 

So as you noticed it's a rather warm tone of Panzer Grey. As I wrote in the previous post, I used Buff instead of white for the highlights. But the final two or three layers had white mixed into the previous "warm" mixture. If you're using an unusual color for highlights, you reach a point when the original tone becomes so distorted that pushing it any further would probably make the end result... confusing, to say the least. 

I wanted to try a different take on the traditional Panzer Grey and I must say, this warm tone looks very pleasing to me! There was a bunch of practical reasons for this approach that I mentioned in the previous post, too. 

The 60cm barrel was left in the "original" grey, where I used white for highlights, resulting in the more common cold, blueish tone. The historical photo I'm using as a reference hints at this, because the barrel looks rather fresh compared to the mortar, and it doesn't sport the field-applied camouflage. The lifespan of one barrel was around 50 shots, so replacement tubes in a fresh tone of Panzer Grey (or even more extreme, the factory grey heat-resistant primer) had to be pretty common. 

Now I have to apply the decals, and then comes the scariest part: spraying the squiggly camouflage on the mortar using DAK Yellow-Brown!