My current project at hand is a 1:10 bust of a SS machine gunner.
The face is done:
Now comes the hardest part: the camouflage uniform in pea pattern.
Base colour and high and low lights are on…
Wish me luck with the camo pattern!
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Just take it slow Erwin- every so often put it down and look at it for a bit to see the progress- and of course good luck!
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Thanks Karl,
I don’t think it is possible to rush this in any way. I will have to painstakingly try and replicate the original pattern:
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Before you get started, the figure appears to be wearing the late pattern camouflaged smock which would be in “Oak Leaf” or similar rather than “Pea”. I’d be interested to know the provenance of that colour picture of a smock in “Pea”. It looks a bit bright to me, suspect it’s a modern fake. In 50 years of studying the Waffen SS, I’ve never seen a photo of a genuine “Pea” smock. You have to understand they are not just different garments, they are different materials. The smock is cotton “duck”, the “Pea” clothing is drill, a completely different fabric which totally lacks the showerproof qualities of the smock. Smocks were screen printed, a laborious process. By contrast the “Pea” pattern clothing was machine printed, not an option on the smock material. The “Pea” smock pictured also lacks the white sections in the print where the patterns fail to overlap properly and the fabric shows through; this is very characteristic of genuine clothing.
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Thanks for your extensive reply… If the smock is a different pattern, the colours will be different too! Darn! That means that the set I bought is basically useless… I will have to see what colours I need then…
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Calvin Tan has painted numerous WSS patterned camo over the years and you can hardly go wrong with his advice. Don’t be discouraged by his remarkable talent though.
The RHS sidebar lists all his work so it’s easy to find the WSS ones.
Good luck!
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It is from a Evilbay ad..
The seller does not claim it is an original smock, yet he does not say it is a replica either…
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Thanks… I will have to buy some new paints to get the correct colors… I will use the colors included in the Calvin AK set. Pity. I really like how it turned out now…
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Yes, I concur. I have his book on Waffen SS figures. While it does not cover all permutations it is a good primer on painting SS camouflage. Correct patterns are shown in plates within the chapters and he recommends paints and colours.
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To be honest, if you were happy to go with the browns of an Autumn pattern, the work done so far would be a good grounding.
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Ok, I decided to go for the AK set which seems nice enough. But the leaflet included is (at least for the Oak Leaf pattern) completely useless. The colors suggested for the base color are Grey Green, Basalt Grey and Grimey Grey. If following the logic of medium base, dark Shadow and light highlights, the colors used do not make sense at all.
I mailed Calvin about this and he was so kind to respond. He admits that the leaflet was not well thought out. He was not informed how the information was going to be used.
I think I managed to come up with a suitable mix (all colors from said set):
Base: a mix of Waffen Brown and Basalt Grey.
Shadow: Burnt Umber
High: base+some Light Earth.
The result:
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Yes, that looks like a pretty good base for the Autumn camouflage. The colours are particularly difficult for this version, as they are all pretty non-descript. I always mix my own colours anyway and still use Humbrol, so can’t really provide any guidance. I did my creases with a sort of thinned down brown wash; if you follow Calvin Tan’s advice he suggests putting the darker tones of the camo in the creases, but to get a realistic finish, you can’t always do this. Here’s my Tamiya 1/16th infantryman, if that’s any help. My aim in painting this camo is more to get the “feel” of it than get too fixated on colour and pattern.
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Excellent job on that camo and the figure overall, very nice!
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Thanks… I recon I will treat each spot like the rest of the uniform: base, highlights and shadows.
Talking about tedious!
Your fig looks very nice!
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I think it’s good; every uniform is different through various conditions.
It’s been a while (5 years), but I used the Scale 75 (War Front) colors directly from the bottle.
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I love your approach of capturing the feel of the camo pattern rather than replicating it exactly, as it makes painting camo far less intimidating to those of us modellers with more rudimentary painting abilities.
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Dankjewel…
The smock will be the next, even bigger challenge. This was only a testing ground… Glad that you think I succeeded!
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That is excellent!
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