On to the real colour! I sprayed most of the tank with SCC 15 British olive drab from AK 3rd Gen:

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This is why I got out the white background again, because with the black one I doubt the colours would be very good in the pictures. That Zimmerit, incidentally, doesn't make spraying any easier. You have to do it all from at least two sides to make sure there's paint everywhere. Before I sprayed the tank, I painted parts of the commander's hatch in Tamiya Dark Yellow 2, so that the bits that would be covered by the closed hatch would keep that colour. I don't know if the real tank was like that or if they touched it up after spraying it, but the model is more interesting this way.

The bottom of the hull got a coat of black, after I got advice from a fellow modeller with a background in soil types about the colours of the soil in the area of the Netherlands in which Cuckoo operated. Some of the soil there is very dark, black-brown, and since photos of Cuckoo show its undercarriage to be darker than the upper parts, I figure it was probably covered in thin mud of that sort of colour. Thus, I sprayed it black:

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Though slightly more involved than that  The parts that will be behind the wheels are simply black airbrush-ready paint from AMMO, while the bits higher up and more in the light, I sprayed with that same paint with Field Drab from Vallejo Model Air mixed in. The proportions were more or less random as I did this by eye, but probably around 1:1, though it obviously varied every time I had to refill the paint cup.

The difference is very hard to see in the photo above, but I painted the wheels the same way, and it's clearer there by holding them side-by-side:

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The inner two rows of roadwheels are simply black, while the outer two and the drive sprockets and idler wheels are the lighter mixture.