Matching Pigment colors to specific locations

[Sander69]

HElla Modellers!
I have a question for you…

Some back ground…
My Mother’s Uncle (my Great Uncle?) was in North Africa and Southern Italy during world War 2 and we believe that he was in the Anzio breakout. He is credited with knocking out four German tanks in one day and I wanted to build a realistic diorama of him cleaning his M-10s barrel (which was apparently his only reward).

However, I have been beating my head against my desk in frustration over not being able to find what colors to use for weathering pigments on my 1/32 M10 tank destroyer.

The pictures I have been able to find on the internet are in black and white. The breakout happened sometime in late May to early June (I think) and the soil and vegetation look very dry From the pictures I have found.

I also doubt my Uncle Quintin would have spent a lot of time cleaning something as long as it worked. I want my m-10 model to be heavily coated with dust. What color is Italian dust? As I understand it southern Italy get a good amount of very fine grain sand from storms in North Africa so that would have been a factor in the coloring as well.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thank you,

Steve

 

[Jakko]

You’ll want to research soil colours for the area you’re interested in. “Italian dust” is too broad: you can bet the dirt in the Po valley in northern Italy has a rather different colour than the sandy dust on Sicily, for example. I would suggest, therefore, to type into your favourite search engine a term like Anzio soil colour (assuming it’s Anzio you’re talking about, of course — though a problem here turns out to be that the word Anzio causes a lot of hits about the wartime action there).

 

[rtfoe]

I dunno but dust to me is the same everywhere unless it's from red soil like in Vietnam. It's hard to tell whether the scene is bone dry in a B/W photo but I can understand dust being kicked up in arid dry climates having been to SW Australia during summer and Beijing in Winter(it's next to a desert so it's really dusty) The landscape is basically brown and yellow. I can see why the Germans painted their armour in dark yellow.

I typed soil in Anzio and got some coloured images of the landscape. Looked like any Mediterranean or Aegean landscape.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[Jakko]

dust to me is the same everywhere unless it's from red soil like in Vietnam.

That’s not quite true, though that red soil like they have there (and in several other parts of the world) is probably the most visible. Where I live, for example, we basically have two kinds and colours of soil. One is a light greyish tan sand that’s only found on beaches and the sand dunes that border them. The other is grey clay that covers the rest of the land, which is a medium grey when dry but dark grey with a blue hue when wet (though it’s not going to give off any dust then ). Oh yeah, and sometimes when it rains, we get a thin coating of sand over everything, especially visible on cars, that’s not the same shade as the beach sand because it comes from the Sahara. Yes, really.

 

[rtfoe]

You'll see more color of the dust on a white background but more less and lighter in shade on dark backgrounds I think.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[rtfoe]

That’s not quite true, though that red soil like they have there (and in several other parts of the world) is probably the most visible. Where I live, for example, we basically have two kinds and colours of soil. One is a light greyish tan sand that’s only found on beaches and the sand dunes that border them. The other is grey clay that covers the rest of the land, which is a medium grey when dry but dark grey with a blue hue when wet (though it’s not going to give off any dust then ). Oh yeah, and sometimes when it rains, we get a thin coating of sand over everything, especially visible on cars, that’s not the same shade as the beach sand because it comes from the Sahara. Yes, really.

You maybe right about the two colours. The images of the Anzio beach and inland show different hues of soil...there maybe a third hue with the dust from both the beach and inland mixed...hmmmm.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[Tim Marlow]

The dust where I live now is yellow tinged due to the underlying clay. Where I used to live it was white due to the underlying chalk. We occasionally get the Sahara dust (which is more yellow) after rain as well. The best bet is to look at the soil type in the area in question and base your dust on that.

 

[dalej2014]

I'd say your best bet is a neutral light brown dust colour. Rather than getting hung up on the details just go for the model to pay respects to your great uncle.
From what I can see on the web Anzio soil and landscape is desert like, with more vegetation (think Westerns and cowboys?).
Also worth bearing in mind a couple of things - 1. if the only references are black and white no-one else will know for sure either. 2 - "dirt" varies enormously in colour. Here in Suffolk, UK we have rich dark soil, red clay soil, yellow clay soil, light brown dirt etc. etc.
This link may help, although it's Spanish soil, it's fairly close. I'd say first pic, top left is typical.