How to Paint a Military Vehicle

Most military vehicles that you see in pictures, magazines, movies and television usually come in camouflage paint. If you have a military vehicle that still needs a painting job, below are some tips and tricks to help you paint a military vehicle:

Sandblast The Vehicle

Before painting a military vehicle, you will need to make sure that it is stripped off any traces of its previous paint. More often than not, military vehicles that desperately need a paint job are those that are salvaged, restored and restructured to look like new.

If this were the case, you should check the vehicle for any other rusty portions before you decide to bathe it with a new coat of paint.

Choose Your Paints

If you want to make your military vehicle to look authentic, you just can’t paint it pink, yellow, or orange. You have to use the paint that is officially and commonly used by military vehicles. These include a combination of black and olive drab with blue and white specks.

The lightness and darkness of the color should be matched to blend with the typical and predominant color in the terrain wherein military vehicles operate. The light gray or white paint should be applied to the undersurfaces of military vehicles in order to make them reflect the light and in turn lighten the dark shadows on the undercarriage. This method or technique of painting a military vehicle is known as countershading.

Painting Proper

1. Apply primer or what we most commonly call the first coating of paint. This will ensure that the following paint coats will stick and last longer to the surface of the vehicle.
2. Wait for the primer to dry.
3. After the first coating has dried, you can use a spray paint or typical paintbrushes. Whatever method or instrument of painting you choose, make sure that you successfully mix and match the colors of camouflage. If you think that you can’t really paint a military car all by yourself, it would be best if you ask the help of painting professionals.

Additional Tips

When painting a military vehicle, it would be helpful if you knew the different appropriate colors for different kinds of terrains or locations:

• For jungles and temperate zones: olive drab with black
• For desert terrain: olive drab with specks of earth red paint
• For snowy areas with trees: olive drab with white specks