painting tank tracks

[malfuriouspete]

hey guys, first post for me...

Have myself a Tamiya 1/35 Panther G and King Tiger and wondering about which colours to use to pain tracks. These models come with black rubber tracks.

Tamiya recomends Metallic Grey for the tracks... but I think it looks too shiny. I've painted spare tracks to attach to the hull and I think I'm gonna re-do them. I'm curious to know which colour would be good to paint tracks then?

For the black rubber tracks, I took a bit of metallic grey and basically lightly drybrushed the raised areas. They don't like shiny at all but I'm more concerned about realism. There's still a lot of black areas and really wondering what to do about them.. or just leave it alone.

any help would be greatly appreciated

[Nicholas Bruccoleri]

Hello Mal. Here is what I do. I usually spray a base coat of Dark brown (tamiya black and red brown) on both sides of the tracks.

The top side gets dry brushed silver, then followed by added mig pigments (European dust and gulf war sand) mixed with water to simulate mud.

The bottom is then airbrushed a light earth color only in the center of the tracks links in a cloud pattern, making sure the area where the different links connect stays dark brown.