"Falklands Royal Marines camo pattern" Topic

Hello. I'm going to paint a Yomper from the Royal Marines at the Faklands but I have some doubts on the uniform.

I only have available a couple of Ospreys and the photo linked below but I'd like to see a closer photo of those uniform. Is there anything online?, maybe a reenactment unit?.

link

Many thanks in advance.

They had the same camo as everyone else any photo from 70s early 80s will do, colours vary abit depending on whether its army issue or private but not by much.

Have been afew changes since the mid 80s but for wargame painting they are pretty minimal.

google with "dpm camo"

There are Cold war re-enactment groups with pics, but essentially the uniform is what I've got on in my profile pic:

DPM jacket & trousers (possibly plain green trousers)
58 pattern webbing (darkish green)
SLRs (by the time of the Falkands pretty well all with plain black plastic furniture), dark green slings.
Bergens (also dark green), or suitcases for the Guards…
Hats/helmets of various types

I usually do DPM as:

Black undercoat
Very, very heavy drybrush of sand (which leaves some of the black showing)
Swirl on reddish brown streaks
Swirl on green streaks

Do the green last so you can control the overall tone, as DPM is essentially mottled green from a distance. Sometimes it fades to quite a yellowish tone. Some people do extra black bits on top, but I find hte bits of undercoat showing through are plenty.

Thanks a lot for your kind help, Black Bull and Martin. Now I'll be able to paint it much better as the doubts have been clarified.

Thank you.

The Mongrel Miniature site has a nice step-by-step DPM guide.
mongrelminis.co.uk
It's under Painting Guides: NATO British.

Something to remember about British DPM is that while technically they are the same colour the various shades can vary.

I paint DPM essentially the same as Martin, but paint in black 'swooshes' first, after painting the sand base. British DPM is/was very dark compared to other people's camo (such as US Woodland), looking almost black from long range, in daylight. In my opinion, it just doesn't look right without the black. But don't overdo ir! By doing the brown and green after the black, you can control the overall tone.

I also give them a very light dry-brush with the base sand,in order to mute the hard edges of the camo.

As has been said, the colours could vary quite markedly in the days before CS95 (they seem to be using better dye these days). The sand could vary from mustard yellow to a dingy khaki-green, but was usually a greenish ochre (Humbrol 83 is a dead match). The brown could vary between dark orange to dark red-brown, via dark earth, but it was usually a brick red (Humbrol 60). The green was often surprisingly bright and I would opt for Hubrol 80. The black could also fade to a dark slate grey.

I just had a look at the Mongrel Miniatures guide – nice figures! However, the guide seems a bit arse-about-face. DPM uses sand as the base colour, so whay not use that as the base colour for your painting? This makes sense to me. He's also done the bum-roll DPM, which isn't correct. It should be OD canvas; the same as the webbing.

Thanks a lot R Mark, I'll follow the advice.

"Royal Marines at the Faklands"

It is Falklands not Faklands (correction not a criticism, I know English isn't your first language).

It is probably best to practice painting DPM on just on a few figs first.

I once read through a particularly tedious multi-page thread discussing the different patterns of DPM and the styles it came in. And they didn't even touch on foreign use or variants like Smog.

link

Anyway, Forces 80 are not a bad bunch forces80.com

Yeah… well… even when google corrects me every time I write it bad when making searches I shamefully commit the same error again and again. Falklands, Falklands, Falklands.

Thanks a lot Frontovik, the photos are of the best help as I can get similar tones as the photos.