15mm WW2: Panzer IV ausf. H - Airbrush camo

I'm taking a break from 40k and I'm now foraying into the world of 15mm WW2 models. As I've said before, this is a quite natural evolution as I play World of Tanks and have a general interest in all things concerning the development of new technologies. And believe it or not, but war has been the best catalyst for the development of technology.

So I know this might be a bit morbid, but I have a serious interest in how weapons work, how they have evolved over the course of history and the tactics behind deploying them.


I decided to add the schürzen to the panzers. This makes them ausf. H and gives me the ability to field them late-war (not that that matters much in terms of gameplay, but the history-novice inside me needs this).

Apparently, I don't have pictures of a grey-plastic panzer with schürzen, so on with the painting pics then:

As you could've guessed, I stuck the turrets on a spare flying stand so I can pick them up without touching the actual painted model and undercoated them black with my airbrush.

Just to get a feel of how they paint I decided to paint up two of them for starters. So those two I gave a coat of dead flesh paint (it's the closest to dunkelgelb I have right now as I've not yet bought panzer-specific paints).

Considering they will get a wash of sepia at some point in time, I think the yellow turned out well. This was then abandoned for about a week but yesterday I had the courage to try a camo scheme on them using my airbrush.

Late war german panzers were usually painted using the same 3 colors: yellow, green and brown. However, the camo pattern used was not standardized at all. The green and brown paint was usually applied in the field by their crew over the yellow basecoat they came with from the factory. That's why you see all kinds of different camo schemes.

As I wanted to apply it with my airbrush and 15mm models are small, I opted for broad bands of alternating colors.

Overall, I like how it looks, even though the green is somewhat too bright. I'm hoping the (to be added) sepia wash will tone it down along with the yellow. The brown looks good as it is.

Next steps:

1. Sepia wash
2. Yellow weathering drybrush
3. Detailing
4. Decals

So this is my first 15mm project. What do you guys think?