Building the 1/700 Kursk...

The Kursk Class boats are black.. The effect of two colors may be Tamiya's attempt to replicate the difference between the smooth and nonskid areas of the Hull.
Blue or anyshade of blue would be wrong.

Never use out of the bottle black to replicate real-world black. It's usually too stark. Instead use a VERY dark grey. I take a bottle of Model Master gunship grey and darken the entire bottle. If you look at the tamiya pics... they're really different shades of grey. Look at the picture below... notice the only black areas are in fact the recessed detail areas on the hull.

Thank you very much sirs! I'll be testing out some various greys to test. German Grey + Field Blue comes to mind, as well as other variations of grey. Butchy, yes you are right! So far all the reference pics of the Kursk seem to be a metallic black.... at least those i've seen. But for this model I want the details to stand out without resorting to some weathering to bring out the details.

Sorry for the late reply - was concentrating on yet another project. The Kursk is not ready to be started as I still lack a crucial piece of information which I can't seem to locate on the web - how the missile bays open. I intend to have it open and displaying the missile silo... but I can't find any reference pictures. :(

Thanks for your assistance!