Will here: Wednesdays, Colour Schemes and Reference Books

Hello again all, Will here, back for another swing at Bolt Action.

I had intended to make this post earlier today, but my M18 Hellcat arrived from Warlord and I got a little bit exited. So, while the washed resin sits to dry, I'll make a little update for people.

First of all, I've made myself a decision regarding my articles here on the 22nd's blog. See, with university coming to a close now, hopefully we can all get ourselves in gear and start to turn this into a regular thing - but since I'm not strictly at university anymore, I'll be making blog posts here every Wednesday. Hopefully. I'm also going to be making them on a fortnightly rota - one week on rules, one week on painting, and probably a smattering of battle reports as soon as we get a camera fixed.

So, with that out of the way, I'll move on to what I want to talk about this week - painting! I think one of the greatest challenges moving here into Bolt Action directly from 40k has probably been the change in painting styles. I had a very set painting routine for every model with 40k, which created bright and vibrant but good looking models (even if it did take me ages), with great varied colours and exaggerated tones. Sadly, this isn't as relevant for the more drab tones of real-scale models for Bolt Action.

My first models were simply assembled and sprayed, which took long enough in itself, then painted in greens to pick them out as US soldiers (and therefore my models in our club) without too much of a care to actual references. At this point I still held to my base-shade-layer-highlight-drybrush mentality so heavily set from 40k, and so once based and washed, the models wound up looking like this:

First attempts: Identifiable, but also not particularly accurate

All things considered, it worked pretty well for what I wanted - identifiable models - but it wasn't fully painted yet. The mix of Castellan Green and Death World Forest for the green tones worked great for what I considered to be 'Olive Drab', but it wasn't actually close to what I was trying to create. I did push through with one of the models with this tone to create this final model:

Fully painted in the original colours: Not too happy with the results.

The final colours were off, to me. Firstly, the trousers were much too bright, looking almost lime green in places. The shirt had been worked up to green and then shaded down with Agrax Earthshade, but since the wash went on streaky, the final product just looked dirty. Permissible, I guess, but I wasn't happy with it.

See, at around this point, I became more and more enamored with the idea of creating a largely historically accurate force, focusing on the US presence in France - particularly the Ardennes. I didn't have many photos or references to go by, but I was lucky enough to find a book at Salute on one of the stalls that helped massively with that problem.

The book. ISBN is 978-2-35250-340-8: get it if you want some good references for camo schemes or equipment!

While I was a little disappointed to suddenly realise Warlord have a distinct lack of M1928 haversacks in among the US infantry sprues, the access to good photos and descriptions of much of the kit that was used at different periods of the war proved massively helpful. There are five particular references useful to anyone painting US (and a good handful of other useful ones) for US forces in France, and with the help of a few sticky notes, some colour swatches and the firm decision to do away with the 'every colour needs a base' mentality that 40k has drilled into me, I've produced this:

Much better!

While it's yet to be completed (needed me some new paints, so I've yet to finish layers and highlights), this model has a much more accurate paint scheme true to the uniform of US forces in France, '44. I'm happy with it, and hopefully I'll have a squad ready within a fortnight to show off alongside some step-by-step guides to US with GW paints, but we shall see.

All in all, I'm just happy I've got some GIs with some paint on, so I'm happy. Still, enough ramblin' for one Wednesday. Will here, signing off.