"15mm US Army Woodland BDU pattern; mid-late 80’s" Topic

Hi, I'm looking for a painting guide and some techniques to represent the above look in 15mm. I'm satisfied I have the right color paints, but uncertain how to achieve a good effect/result. Any guidance is welcome!

Hey there.
If you are going 15mm, trust me when I say, that the overall visual pattern is going to be essentially invisible once you are 2-3 feet away from the mini as the BDU color patterns tended to "blend".
Since you are doing the 1980's I would say that the basic color for the BDU, however if you really want to be detailed, I would start with the light green color as a base color. Then add the dark green breaking up the light green pattern considerably. After that, add an almost equal amount of brown to break up the greens. And finally a smaller touch of black on the edges of the dark green and browns in random areas, to break up the colors and to look like shadows.
There are many pictures of 1980's "US ARMY" BDU's", but you also have to remember, that the BDU's you see for sale on Etsy, Ebay, etc…are usually "Not field" BDU's, but surplus or "parade style". BDU's often faded and lost a lot of their sharper colors when in the field and exposed to the elements.
If you need some pics, let know.

Hope this helps!

Murphy

Use your search engine's images option to find lots of photo references for them.

Pretty easy to replicate the pattern once you get a good idea of what it looks like.

I found this tutorial VERY helpful in 20mm, and you could probably adapt it to 15mm with no problem.

link

(as for the Tamiya spray he's talking about? Try the AS9 Dark Green, at least that was the closest match when I ran it through paintRack, or just brush paint it with VMC Reflective Green, which is what I wound up doing).

Murph is absolutely right about fading. I'd probably add 10-20% white to the colors. I do for my T2K figures and it nails it for faded BDUs.

Thanks all, useful tips!