What is a convincing paint color for the TESB snowspeeder

no go with medium gray it is a darker and would show better in a "wash" as for the white "Wash" go with a opposite medium. If you are using enamel paints for your base coat use acrylic for the "wash" since acrylic is water soluble and won't strip your base coat versus doing a wash of enamel paint over a base of enamel paint. But for your wash I suggest heavily thinning the white acrylic paint with water and just brush it on. With it thinned heavily the medium gray should show through just enough to get the effect you want. Though if you are using Tamiya Medium Gray I would suggest using Testors white instead since the same warning goes when you use 2 like products to do a base and a wash they would end up stripping one another.

Thank you so much for the response, I like the idea of using acrylic over enamel , That probably will be the way that I go with the finish.

Well look at it this way look at pictures of WWII Aircraft and tanks painted for winter combat the White wash over the painted on camoflage is Acrylic paint anyways like Tamiya's paint and the paint that is on the surface before the wash is applied is oil based like Testors paints.

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/starwars/jb_sspdr2.jpg

I prefer to paint my actual underneath color, whatever it is, and then flat coat the whole project.

I thin down actrylic paint such as tamiya gloss or gunze gloss white, perhaps touch a drop of grey to it or even tan to show a dirtier white.  spray it on almost covering the whole thing, but leave a hint of the base showing here and ther where it would  come into contact with the ground and crews, wearing the whitewash efffect away.

Let this dry for an hour or so and use common alcohol and a wide brush to wipe some of this off, usually in a downward motion. The effect is striking, but dont overdo it. On Hoth the dominant color (actually about the only color) was white so keep the alcohol removal to a minimum. 

Apply a flat coat when your satisfied, and then go over the whole model with highly diluted (30:1) Prussian Blue artist oil to shade it, toning down the white and making it look used.  on the bottom side you can apply a typical umber wash for dirt, and maiintenence induced grunge. 

 HTH

David

 

The 'speeder is one of the (many) "on-hold" projects I've started but not finished yet.  I used FS Light Gray for the base color. My plan was to use slightly darker shades for plating detail and a medium gray wash for weathering.

 

The trickiest part for me was choosing the a red for the markings on the sides of the engines.  Since the bluescreen compositing process can alter colors I didn't trust much of the battle footage and was going to use the footage of the full-size sets from the hangar scenes for reference.  Then I noticed they didn't have any red markings on those sets.  Finally I settled on Testors Russian Marker Red for both the 'speeder and X-wing.  It seemed to match the red with a little "twist" of orange better than any other shade I found.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to that soon and then figure out how to post the pics here.  Til then, hope my two cents' worth is useful.