The stripes of the Royal Tiger

What does a normal, young male do when he gets out of his workplace on a Friday afternoon in good time and there's nothing special planned for the weekend? I don't know about the rest of them but I rushed home like a madman and started my compressor the first thing after I had got my shoes off. Then I started painting the primed tank with a nice coat of Moss Green. Hey, you've got to use the time you have as well as you can, right?

Confusing contrastlesness

When the tank was finally completely green, including all the random pieces, it was time to start making a mess. Obviously. The shape is to be broken, say the people who know something about these things. So, from my two options I chose the Sand Brown (what a weird name, to me it looks a lot more like Chocolate Brown) because I reasoned that if I start with these brown splotches and areas here and there, it's so easy to paint the borders with the sandy color (the container says just Grey).
Ok. That's what I started doing over a couple of rounds. While the paint was still damp, I was admiring my handiwork. Things were progressing nicely indeed.

But what happened then?

Before this afternoon's stripings I was juggling the pieces around in my hands and wondering, how tiny the contrast is when the paints have dried. Not that was a problem, because the tank wasn't going to be painted like a children's coloring book ("Color the boxes that have number 1 with color a"), but something completely different. If the green, brown and grey were mixed, intersecting and all that, it'd just look more natural.

After the inspection I took out the grey paint and started spraying with a noticeably smaller opening. My severe lack of skill led to the paint pooling a bit in a couple of places. Yes, I know, I was spraying way too close to the model sometimes. The end result isn't even close to the scheme of the Finnish Army, but had it been a German with OKH's standard colors, it'd been right at home.

Ptooie

Maybe I had thinned the paint wrong, set the pressure wrong (too high?) or both, the airbrush still spits a bit. You can tell from the pics. It doesn't look bad at all from a small distance but up close... oh my no. It looks obscene to me.

Would you buy it if I claimed that I was going for a movement effect?

I didn't imagine I'd get it done on the first go, so I was prepared for a fixing round or a few. The next step may be that I add some stripes to the rear of the tank, the rear that I completely forgot after spraying the right mudflap a bit. Maybe. Otherwise I'll go for the green and brown areas that could be fixed where the grey went in a funny pattern or covering too large an area.

I forgot to add stripes to the rear. Oopsis.

 

Let's see how the fixing goes. Does it go nicely or do I just ruin what I have achieved? Maybe I crash like a tank that's driving blindly into a thick forest. But hey, who cares if the tank weighs 70+ tons? Brum brum brummmmmmm 8)

It doesn't actually look bad from this angle...