What's an expert's technique on tires

Not an expert,but I use Tamiya XF-85 rubber,and Mission Models makes MMP-105 Worn Tire,then I wash,and weather with pigments appropriate to the location.

Hello!

My advice would be to take a really good look at a tire - 4WD vehicle would be cool, but any truck or car will do... THEN try to say what color is it? Hint, it isn't black. It's dark to light gray with a tint depending on the local dirt colour. Just painting the tires gray helps the look a lot, it's even better when you mix some brown or sand in, depending on the terrain.

Hope this helps - good luck with your builds and have a nice day

Paweł

It also depends on the material of the tire. If it's regular styrene, I paint it like I would any other part.

But if it's vinyl, like in the Academy M151 series, I coat them in Future acrylic coating and then I weather the tire. Sometimes, vinyl tires will deteriorate surrounding plastic after a while if the vinyl and plastic touch one another.

For vinyl tires I just use dry pigments to dirty them up a bit. Pic below shows Vallejo pigments on kit soft vinyl tires:

IMG_3492 by Russel Baer, on Flickr

I so rarely build anything with inflatable tires I should be mute on that. For solid rubber tank road wheel tires I use various dark grays, same as Pawel said. Even brand new tires are dark gray. To see what happens to a tire after some off-road use, visit any construction site.

Most of the time we would drive our 151s, 715s, 706s, and tracks on gravel perimeter roads or paved streets more that grass so the tires and vehicles picked up a grey powder effect that I would spray on with my airbrush using a light grey or a little bit darker.  Usually there would be more grey on the sides of the tires.

Some very nice looking work.

Tojo72

Not an expert,but I use Tamiya XF-85 rubber,and Mission Models makes MMP-105 Worn Tire,then I wash,and weather with pigments appropriate to the location.