It’s difficult to ascertain a clear paint finish under all that rust and river debris, but it almost certainly would have originally received a dark yellow base coat. As to whether it had any traces of camo, I have not read of any evidence that it had. The Polish resto team never added any, which leads me to believe that it didn’t, but with just the one surviving vehicle it's always possible that others did.
My chassis and running gear were painted over red oxide primer with Tamiya acrylic dark yellow XF60, but I am still not 100% sure as to whether buff or deck tan was thrown into the final mix to lighten it! I added buff when painting the new sprockets and aftermarket wheels so it was interesting to note the subtle difference in hue it made to the dark yellow base coat using different primer coats. Whilst both the solid tyred road wheels and the new sprockets were primed in grey and came out in a far creamier finish, the central hubs already primed in red oxide came out in a warmer dark yellow hue, which was an almost perfect match to the originally painted chassis. It is always worth bearing in mind the colour shift you get when airbrushing over different primer colours.
With the interior and the chassis connecting points masked off, the body was treated to two light coats of Tamiya fine, rattle can red oxide primer. Then, switching to my airbrush to get more control over paint coverage I used Mr Mahogany surfacer 1000 to cover any remaining bare surfaces. This also served as a rough pre-shade.
For the Dunkelgelb base coat layers I used a mix of both lacquer and acrylic Tamiya paints. Each mix received a few drops of LP55 and was thinned with Mr Hobby levelling thinner.
I went with a very slight modulation effect. Starting with equal parts Mahogany surfacer and LP55.
Then getting progressively lighter as I moved higher up the model, first with just LP55, then lightened with XF75.
LP4 was added to the final coats and applied from above over the horizontal surfaces.
At this point I could envisage a fairly straightforward process to complete the weathering as per the restored vehicle. I had already contemplated adding some modern figures, but I paint so many of my axis AFVs in a simple monochromatic dark yellow finish that I figured it deserved a splash of ‘what if’ camo.
With some late 1944 soft edged camo scheme period reference pics to hand, the green pattern was airbrushed freehand first. This comprised of a mix of LP31 and LP26. This was followed by the red brown which was a mix of LP57, Mr Hobby chocolate brown and Tamiya XF64 acrylic.
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24 hours later a coat of AK real colours satin varnish was airbrushed on in preparation for the decals and upcoming weathering steps.
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