Para Test Paints

With my workbench finally clear of hedges, I decided today to do a bit of painting.

I started off by painting the commander for my recently painted Matilda II:

He just needs to be varnished and glued into his hatch.

As he was finished quite quickly, I grabbed one of the Warlord Paras to do a test of the painting scheme. I realised quite quickly (mostly before I actually began painting)that some of the colours I'd chosen wouldn't look quite right with the painting style I am intending to use (only using washes for flesh and select items), so I quickly substituted colours that would work.

Here is the first test figure:

I didn't like the ground colour, so I repainted it - much better.

There are a number of things that I'm not happy with, so I've made appropriate changes to my scheme:

* replace Pale Sand with Sand Yellow as addition colour for brown highlights
* webbing colour too dark - replace Reflective Green with German Uniform
* modify Denison colour patches slightly
* add a Sepia wash as final step for toggle rope

The beret colour and flesh came out well though!

However, a lot of the Paras would still be wearing 1st pattern Denison which has a more yellow-brown base colour, rather than the pale olive of the 2nd pattern. I decided to try a couple of different colours to see which came close to the look I wanted:

Tan Yellow; Japanese Uniform; Brown Sand

Each of the colours above was highlighted in two steps by adding Sand Yellow and then Pale Sand. The colour I was aiming for is somewhere between the Japanese Uniform and Brown Sand. I ran a test on another figure, using two additions of Sand Yellow to highlight:

Tan Yellow; Ochre Brown

Japanese Uniform; Ochre Brown

Brown Sand; Ochre Brown

I think I have my scheme pretty much nailed now:

Tomorrow I will be re-blacking the test figures I painted today and adding basing gunk to this lot:

They will get primed on Monday, then I can get the SYW Russians out and start painting them.