Weathering multi-color camo

Sounds like there are a couple of options availabe. Thanks to everyone for your help

Devo - with high contrast camo schemes what I do is after all painting has been done I use a VERY thin (like 5:1 thinner to paint ratio if not more) coat of the lighter paint color with a dab of white to lighten it a tad more than the original, and from at least 6" mist it over the entire upper fuselage and on the sides, VERY slightly overlapping the demarcation line at the upper/lower paint colors...

If the underside is another very contrasting color (i.e. RLM Light Blue lowers with RLM Sand yellow and RLM dark green on top) I take the same light mix of the lower color plus a tad of white and same kind of mist over the lower surfaces slightly overlapping the demarcation line again...

The paint should look like colored thinner, with the sand yellow I spoke of it looked like a slightly chalky water in the spray cup...


here's an example on a Martlet I did based in N Africa..
before spraying it looked like a Reno racing aircraft...



Here it is weathered after the light top coat
This blends the colors a bit making it look less "new" and toylike. When you are done you coat it with future and weather away!!! This also helps reduce the contrast... Andy and Simon already covered that for you...



P.S. the tannish streaks on the sides are pastels.. I was trying to immitate the accumulation of sand blown across protuberances on the fuselage.. it doesn't have that much contrast to the eye.

Good luck!!

You can use washes and pastels. The 1/72 Spitfire below was given a lightly applied dark wash, mostly streaking back along the direction of airflow. If you want the heavily emphasize the panel lines, something that looks unrealistic to me but is popular these days, you can flow more wash into them to make them more pronounced. I think understatement here is better than overstatement. On the green areas, I applied artist's pastel chalk, a light brown color as I recall, kind of grinding it in with a Q-tip. I also used some dark chalk to give some subtle streaking behind the guns as well as make the exhaust stains off the manifolds.

I simulated the typical Spitfire wear casued by the pilot climbing in and out of the cockpit by dry-brushing some silver on the wing root. After a final flat coat, everything looks pretty good. The main idea is to kind of tone down the contrasts, put in a little uneveness and color variation, and add a little dirt and weathering. Again, I think understatement is better than overstatement. If for no other reason than the fact that you can always add more weathering, but if you over do it, it can be a real bear to undo an overdone effect. Go slow and be creative!

Pick up a copy of FSM's Battle of Britain - the painting techniques described there will help. Put simply each colour is painted in 3 shades - the base colour, 1 lighter shade and 1 darker shade. Takes a lot of time to do and practice to do well. Whilst dealing specifically with aircraft I'm sure this technique could be translated to armor. You could weather with your normal technique but each colour needs to be treated separately and weathered to the same degree - more finesse required than scrubbing! Then dirty up the model as a whole - scratches, mud washes etc etc. Hope this is of some help.