The Jacket and Trousers:
This has been a tortuous process in some respects, as I've agonised over different colours of grey, how best to get the effect I wanted, and so on, but ultimately it has been a very positive and thought provoking experience which I think has allowed me to turn a corner with figure painting.
I started with several layers of Vallejo black primer, followed by XF-24 Dark Grey for the trousers and XF-53 for the field blouse. These are lovely colours and I know they don't entirely match field grey or slate grey respectively, but they are good starting points.
Unlike the anti-tank gunner, this figure is based in 1917 and he has uniform items which require earlier colours so I wanted to use different colours to last time. This is where the agonising over colours became an issue because descriptions like slate grey, dark grey, dark slate grey, field grey, etc are not just applied in contradictory ways in the reference sources but it's clear that the colours meant different things to different manufacturers. As a result in some instances field grey, for instance, seems to be a greenish grey, in others a bluish grey, and other a dark slate grey.
For the field grey trousers, then, I started with 335 German Tanker II (Feldgrau) from a Vallejo Panzer Aces set and this seemed to be a good match. At the same time I used 338 Highlight German I (Feldgrau) for the jacket but I felt this was too light, as shown above. After a lot of experimentation I then mixed it equally with 866 Grey Green and arrived at a satisfying colour which eventually became the base for the hat. For the jacket it probably would have worked but then I tried 992 Neutral Grey and this seemed OK. You see what I mean about agonising over the colour? Highlights were done Sunny Skin Tone on the trousers, while for the jacket I used 990 Light Grey, then added 989 Sky Grey and the very top note was 883 Silvergrey. Lowlights were done with the base colour plus 862 Black Grey. The effect is shown below and at this point work took my attention and I didn't return to the kit for a few weeks.
Upon my return I was struck by the awful colour transitions in the highlights and lowlights, partly because of the colours used but also because the paints weren't thinned sufficiently. Back to the drawing board then, but I should stress that this was a positive thing in that it forced a reconsideration of approach toward very, very thinned layers once and for all. Clearly learning this lesson in the past was not sufficient for my addled brain and it needs to be reinforced relentlessly.
After a lot more experimentation and reading around I finally settled on a base of Neutral Grey for the jacket, with highlights using Sunny Skin Tone and lowlights using 941 Burnt Umber. This seemed counter-intuitive to me but the more I looked at grey in daylight conditions the more it became clear that highlights often have a yellowy finish for example. For the trousers I used the same base colour of Highlight German I but for highlights I added Neutral Grey, Grey Green and Sunny Skintone. Adding a colour as dark as Grey Green seems odd in a highlight, but the colours combine to give a greyish green tone which works well, especially in giving a feeling of cloth which has aged. For the shadow I used the base colour with a dot of black and grey green. Above all, for all colours tiny amounts of paint were used, but a lot of thinner, so that I was applying thin washes of colour over ever smaller areas with each layer, making for much more subtle colour transitions.
For the collar I stuck with 920 German Uniform, with lowlights from 979 German Camo Dark Green and highlights with 885 Pastel Green. The piping for the epaulettes was 820 Off White and I then used 947 Red for his unit insignia. Many units used their numbers on their epaulettes, but our chap was from a Hessian regiment with a long history going back to the Seventeenth Century which meant it retained these historical antecedents in its markings. In this case the regiment used a symbol resembling an 'A' but with a stylised configuration. Painting this entailed a fair amount of practice on paper before attempting it in paint and I'm not convinced I've done it justice, but I gave it a try.
Accoutrements:
Leather fittings: were done with 822 German Camo Black Brown, with 869 Basalt Grey added for highlights.
The Water Bottle: This has a rough texture in the original casting but I wanted to enhance this further and so went over it with Mr Surfacer 500, using the brush to stipple the surface. This gives a rougher effect, over which I painted 878 Chocolate Brown. The leather strap was done with 822 Camo Black Brown, while the metal top was done with thinned 865 Oily Steel. Thinning this gives a deeper, used look to the metal which is quite convincing.
The Bayonet: Done with the same leather and metal colours as above, but with 846 Mahogany Brown for the haft.
The Bread Bag and Strap: I used a mix of 882 Middlestone with about 25% 912 Tan Yellow, followed by Off White for highlights and Chocolate Brown for shadows.
The Gas Mask Holder: This received a base of 862 Black Grey which is a lovely colour, reminiscent of the violet grey used in the RLM series. Then I applied chipping medium, followed by a 50/50 mix of 886 Green Grey and 866 Grey Green which was then chipped back. This was then supplemented with sponge chipping with the base colour.
At this stage the various accoutrements were glued to the kit and this is where the metal rods which were inserted at the attachment points earlier in the build came into their own because the resulting joins were firm, untroubled and straightforward. I then applied layers of Vallejo Matt varnish, unthinned, in order to protect the paint from the weathering and in order address some areas where I had rubbed the paint surface with my fingers and so made it shiny.
Finally, I did some post-shading with the Harder & Steenbeck at a fine setting. Heavily thinned layers of XF-10 Flat Brown were applied to the trousers, boots, puttees, the bottom edges of the jacket and key points such as elbows, knees, the bottom of the bread bag, with the airbrush crucially pointing upwards from the feet in order to give the impression of mud splashing upward. This effect is visible in the image above and represents the start of the final push toward completing this lovely kit.
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