Desert Yellow Matt

A sand tone with a wide use

Desert yellow belongs among the shades that carry over between genres easily. In the gaming world it covers canvas cloaks, papyrus, desert walls and bones; in vehicle building it serves as the light ground of sand camouflage schemes and as the color of settled dust. The Game Air line supplies it in a thinned form intended for spraying, so guessing the right ratio with thinner falls away.

Consider what you have at home

The decisive question is not how long you have been painting but what you work with. Without a compressor this consistency is more of a hindrance: with a brush it bleeds and does not cover, so the result will be worse than from an ordinary thick paint. With an airbrush, on the other hand, you get a smooth light area you would hardly repeat with a brush, and it is with light tones that this shows most, because unevenness stands out on them twice over. It pays to reckon too with the fact that light colors need more passes, so the bottle goes down faster than with dark shades.

Procedure and combinations

Over a dark ground it is advisable to lay an intermediate coat in a medium brown first, or the yellow will settle unevenly. Once dry, a brown glaze works very well, settling the tone and giving it a dirty cast, or else stippling with a lighter sand for the impression of a sun-bleached surface. The shade also mixes willingly: a drop of white turns it into faded sand, a drop of brown into dusty soil. It is a good idea to rinse the cup of the airbrush out before the material starts to settle in the corners.