Track Day - painting one-piece tank tracks

Moving on with my 'basic training', I have started work on a few of my one-piece tracks for my quick build models. I haven't really nailed doing tracks yet and this is an opportunity to experiment with a few new techniques.

Above: Three pairs of one-piece tank tracks, on the left are the tracks fro my Pegasus KVs and
on the right is my modified Armourfast T-34 tracks.

I'm not flying solo though, I'm using a few useful tutorials for painting tracks. My main source of reference is Alex Clark's 'Small-Scale Armour Modelling', and excellent book which has gotten me through my first few models. Then there is this online tutorial...

> ScaleModelGuide.com - Painting tank tracks

I started with a base coat of black, then applied a wash of Tamiya's Flat Earth XF-52. I didn't want to go too rusty, a pit-fall that some war gamer modellers are apt to fall into.  I think I did this with the T-34 tracks pictured above, so I am toning down the redness of my wash and going more earthy instead.

Once I laid down the lighter earth and it dried completely I ran a quick thin darker wash over it to accentuate the shadow areas and provide some depth to the earth colour. Hopefully the end result will look like there is a mixture of mud and dry earth on the tracks.

Finally I might do some gentle pin-washing - to deepen the detail - and then some very light dry brushing with some silver to give the metal highlights to the tracks. I may also add some graphite pencil to the prominent areas. We shall see...