"Colours for 6mm WWII troops" Topic

Hi all,
I'm intending to revamp my WWII armies and am wondering if there's a good resource for the colour palettes. I am thinking about the fact that my Vallejo colours might be too dark on 6mm / 300th scale miniatures. My first priority will probably be US, British and German (1943 on). My Soviets look fine for now. So I have a lot of Vallejo paints but I could google equivalents if information was available for other manufacturers' ranges.

Later I aim to do Italians, but I'm not sure if I'll go with 1943 Europe or do a whole desert war collection. (I realise I will be confronted at that point with the 'how to do Bersagliere on tricycles' issue :~D)

Any assistance/guidance/direction appreciated.

Cheers,
John

In that size lighter colors are better. A can of spray paint of your choice and some dry brushing will do the trick unless you are going to examine them with a microscope. Pick out bits and piece such as rifles, boots, and helmets. A dot of whatever passes for "flesh" and it's done.

Vallejo will be absolutely fine but the typical uniform colour, let's say light tropical khaki for desert troops, should be thought of as your base colour. Then apply dots of a lighter sand colour onto the middle of the upper arm, the middle of the forearm, upper thigh, upper part of the back, etc. It will really make the figures pop on the table.

Here is an illustrated painting guide that I prepared:

link

Robert

As Robert says, use the standard uniform colour as the base and then just paint or drybrush a highlight colour eg base plus a dollop of white. Pick out the details and job done.

Having painted a fair amount of 6mm WWII and even some more Modern infantry, I agree with lighter colors.

I prime, undercoat white, and then add the base uniform color over the whole figure.

I do all the detail work and then use a black or brown wash over the figure to make things pop even more.

Here are a few pictures. These are pretty close-up and of course you won't see a lot of the details from 2 or 3 feet away. These figures have excellent detail for their 6mm size.

GHQ Late War German Infantry

GHQ WWII Russian Infantry

More GHQ Late War Germans

Russian Infantry close up

GHQ Afrika Korps

GHQ WWII American Infantry

Very nice Captain Pete. If I could achieve that I'd have had to have died and gone to heaven already :~}

Cheers,
John

The Capt. does such great work!

You might also consider the Army Painter Tone wash technique – this also starts by coverage over a white undercoat (and this perhaps for your initial/base uniform colors)…..then add the detail colors on with opaque painting.

Not WW2 but some British gunners from the Napoleonic era:

Robert

Gasp!

Robert, those are awesome looking.

Thank you. Here are some Napoleonic era British riflemen:

You can see the dot and splot method that highlights the base colours.

Robert

Wow!! I would like to learn to paint as you do.

Those Napoleionics look very nice, Robert!

Thank you also, Erzherzog John and FlyXwire!

So does anyone have close up pictures of the new Heroics and Ros infantry?

Cheers,
John

Ask and ye shall receive…

Starting off, a warm-up. This is from my reasonably recent creation of a US Armored Infantry force. Here is a platoon, all done with H&R infantry.

All of the infantry figures are from the older H&R from the 1990s. Except for one. Can you see the one figure that is a recent H&R figure?

This formation was the third I had build out of a stock of US Infantry figures bought many years ago. I did not have enough BAR gunners to complete the unit, and so I ordered a few of the very recent H&R US Parachute Infantry figures, both to have a look at them and to use the prone BAR gunners (vs. the older style advancing with guns at the hip). So the one prone gunner in the front squad is the newer H&R figure.

I don't have a lot of new H&R stuff in my US forces. I have a bit more in my Italians. Here is a view of some of the new H&R WW2 Italian infantry figures.

These are done in continental uniforms. The stand in the center is an HQ section. The standing officer and the kneeling radio operator are new H&R figures. The figure standing next to the officer, in a helmet with no weapon in hand, is a GHQ artillery crew figure. The prone LMG team near the left edge of the picture is all new H&R.

Here is another angle for viewing the same HQ stand.

Here is an Italian AT rifle team from the new H&R figures (with a Polish wz.35 rifle -- an interesting choice by H&R which was more widely used in the continental forces but less often used in the western desert. There is another team, with a combat leader and 3 SMG gunners standing close by. That team is all GHQ figures.

Here are two Italian 65mm infantry guns. Guns and crews are new H&R figures.

Here are some of the new H&R Italian WW2 combat engineers, still in process of being prepared for mounting.

In my view, the new H&R figures are at the level of modelling and casting that I only saw in GHQ and C-in-C before. I have been fond of the selection of poses and kit available from H&R since the mid-1990s, but the figures used to be notably more basic, less crisp and detailed. But they also were substantially more robust, and so less fragile on the gaming table. Their new figures are a bit larger in size, not so much so as to be un-mixable but still a bit larger. They are substantially better in detailing. Yet they still have a very good selection of poses and equipment that I don't find elsewhere. And they are still a bit more robust than GHQ, and VERY MUCH more robust than the old C-in-C stuff.

At least those are my views.

And the newer vehicles are also very good. In this pic there are two GHQ Italian trucks, and one H&R. Can you figure out which is H&R?

It is the Cierano medium truck in the center. I can not see a difference in modelling or casting quality.

Hope that helps.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

They're lovely. Thanks very much. I agree, the truck looks as good as the GHQ models.

Cheers,
John