Thanks, Ron and VB. I think the military schemes appeal to me more than racers. Ron, I thought I was pretty set on a WWII theme, but your Wizard suggestion now has me thinking about all those great interwar schemes. Curse you! ;-) Maybe go with the open cockpit and one of the many colorful Boeing P-36 Peashooter schemes?
Still, I keep coming back to the Soviet winter idea because I could go with a single color of paint or even pre-colored Oratex fabric (even though the real ones often had light blue lower surfaces) and then do the decoration with vinyl stickers or spray-on plastic dip. In fact, the Oratex would be appropriately "white drab" as if the plane were whitewashed and I could add a few touches of green showing though here and there as if the whitewash were wearing away, something like this:
Here's a twist--what are some other WWII or interwar schemes with a single base color that are still interesting? For example, there are some early American WWII schemes in all-over olive drab and definitely some later ones in all aluminum.