Painting Great War German Infantry - Part 2

You wait for three months, and then two blog posts come around at once! Fired with renewed enthusiasm following yesterday's post, I finished the highlighting on the German troops I've been painting for what seems like months (actually, less than three weeks). As I mentioned yesterday, there wasn't much to do on the highlighting front.

The main job was painting the German feldgrau uniform.

Feldgrau is a tricky colour to get just right. Experts posting on the internet (of whom there are many, but of which I am certainly not one) mention that there were different shades of feldgrau depending on the time of the war, the age of the cloth, the wear and tear of the uniform, the state of the German chemicals industry and so on. Most of the examples I have seen in museums and in re-enactment displays (like the one below from “Wrest Park at War” last month) are a green-grey in sunlight, but seem to be a darker grey when out of direct sunlight.

For a miniature painter, this sort of information which I am passing on is technically termed “unhelpful”! It doesn’t really get you anywhere in painting miniature feldgrau clad soldiers! Hopefully, though, it does get you to the point that you cannot really go wrong painting feldgrau on Great War German figures.

As mentioned yesterday, I use a 50/50 mix of Vallejo German Uniform and Vallejo German Grey as the base shade colour. let’s call that mixed colour “feldgrau” for convenience. I then highlighted that mixture with Vallejo White, about one part white to thee parts of the mixed feldgrau colour. I added some Windsor and Newton acrylic flow improver to keep the feldgrau paint workable and fluid, and then painted it on the highlighted areas. I then mixed some more feldgrau and added Vallejo White, this time a 50/50 mix of feldgrau and Vallejo White and used the resulting mix for the very fine highlights and creases in the soldiers’ uniforms. I was aiming for a look which emphasised the both the sharp folds in the cloth and also the raised, wider areas of cloth on the arms and legs of the uniform.

I also highlighted the helmets on the figures in a mix (again 50/50) of Vallejo German Grey and Vallejo Neutral Gray. When I started the Great War figures a few years ago I tended to dry brush the helmets, looking for a more weathered and scruffy look. This works reasonably well, but over the years I’ve preferred to paint on the helmet highlights. I often feel that when I’m dry-brushing, I’m losing a little control over the painting process. Painting the highlights on in a succession of shades and random patterns I feel like I’ve a little more control over my brush. I’ve also found that, looking from a distance, say about three or four feet from these particular figures in action on a wargames table, that the painted highlights look a lot nicer (to my, very subjective, gaze) than dry-brushed highlights. So the helmet highlights were painted on, losing a little on the randomness and gaining a little on the impressionistic side of the finished figure. Well, at least that’s what I thought – I would never blame anyone for dry brushing helmets, however!

The final items in this stage were to finish off a few things I’d not bothered with before. I washed the metal gasmask cases in a diluted wash of Vallejo Black. I painted the green sword knots on the bayonet with a mix of Vallejo Russian Green and Vallejo Yellow …

… and edged around the bases in Louvre black before photographing.

That was about it for highlighting. There’s one stage left, which is what I like to think of as super-detailing of the figures and the bases. It’s one of those (for me) strictly optional stage, but tends to be something I like to do with figures I’ve enjoyed painting – which, after a long delay of getting these figures finished, I have done here.

Hope you can join me next time for that, hopefully later this week.