WWII U.S. Airborne Step by Step

 

A quick step by step on the way I painted the recently posted US Airborne as requested – I hold these up not as examples of how to make “awesume doods”, but a quick tabletop effective way to get a force together – I can do ten plus of these a day, probably twenty if I did bigger batches..

I prime light grey- I want some desaturation, but I don't want them dark..

It gets pic heavy after the jump..

 

For the uniform I use VMC US field drab as a base

 

This old pot for the leather parts.. historical pics suggest a redder leather was used but I liked the look of this colour

Flesh, Andrea makes awesome flesh paints. I use first light as my base due to the wash to come.

US dark green for the helmets and some bags/pouches

Khaki grey as the base for the webbing and canvas bags/ammo slings

Whatever colour you have on hand for gunmetal,. Reaper MS tarnished steel was used here

 

Different mini as Bestial brwon was used for the wood.. but grease guns had no wood…

Middlestone for the bandage pack – they were a different colour it seems…

this was just for my basing..

then two colours get highlighted, the webbing gets a mix of middlestone and bleached bone applied and without a pic.. the uniform itself gets US field drab with middlestone added as a highlight.

bleached bone itself is used for any rope.

then the whole fig is given a controlled diluted (50/50) wash with strong tone.

once dry, the flesh gets a 50/50 water/ogryn flesh

and finally the eye.. (and on this guy some text/stripe on his smoker grenade)

that’s it, very quick, but the look good on the table. eventually they'll get a matte varnish but not until I've slapped on some decals.  Decals will reflect mixed units as per D day scatter…

hope that was useful – if anyone uses this I'di’d love to hear how it went..