More Splinter Camo

Having a rummage around in the 'german' model draw, I found one of my original attempts at german 'splinter' style camo smocks (a crewman from the fast build Italeri PAK40).  It was interesting looking back and seeing how I'd improved.

Caesar Panzergrenadier on left, Italeri PAK40 crew on right

Now, I'm not saying my recent efforts are perfect, far from it, but it did make me decide to record the process and my thoughts on it and stick it on the blog.  It might be useful to someone but also I'd welcome feedback from anyone who reads this.  Suggestions of alternative patterns, techniques or colours would be more than welcome!

I'm not going to go into a lecture about German WWII camo patterns, it's a ridiculously complicated and thankless task! Nonetheless, the main improvement came from looking at photos and pictures of the patterns.  There were a couple of key things that stuck with me:

• The angular pattern
• That the brown and tan colours dominated

Later 'Marsh' pattern is slightly different, with a less angular pattern and the green more dominant.

So here goes... The unfortunate model in this case is another Caesar Panzergrenadier.  All colours are either Vallejo or GW.

The smock is basecoated with German VJ Camo Beige over a white undercoat.  (The rest of the uniform is VJ Field Grey).

The first camo pattern was added using VJ German Camo Medium Brown.  I kept the patterns quite large and as angular as I could get them.

Green patches added in VJ Luftwaffe Camo Green.  These were kept small and used to fill in 'hollows' in the dark brown.  The overall effect should still be of mainly beige and brown.

A wash of GW Devlan Mud for shade.

Rehighlighted with the original base colours.  The camo smock only got the very lightest highlight with the beige on the edges of the smock and helmet.

So there we are.  Any comments, critiques or suggestions more than welcome!