Early War French Colour Guide

I've been away from Blogger for more or less two and a half years now. Admittedly sometimes I've felt the urge to share some of my work again, but than reason always asserted itself again. I simply can't see me putting the effort in to really make it worthwile for anyone. I always loathed having to spend hours taking halfway passable pictures only to then spend even more time editing them afterwards so they wouldn't be too dark, too light or whatever. Something I failed in more often than not anyway. That time I feel is  better spent painting… or reading. With other, more transient, social media a quick snapshot with your phone is usually enough. And that's the appeal for me. Combined with the fact that Blogger has become more or less unusable with an iPad… but that's a rant for another time.

Anyway, the one thing I feel I still want to continue doing are my painting guides. I'm still amazed that, while I didn't share anything on here for quite a while, those painting guides still seem to attract quite a number of people. So if you happen to be about to start a French Army for the Early War period, todays guide might be something for you.

Figures by Colonel Muller over on Wargaming3D

My painting style is based on the so-called Triad-System or Foundry System in which you use a Shade as the darkest colour. Then you paint over it using what is called a Base Colour (in general the actual colour you want to achieve for the piece you're just painting) leaving the Shade show only in the folds and recesses, followed by a Highlight on the points which will catch the most light. However, I'm using intermediate steps to make the transitions between the different colours much smoother.

Thus typically the steps I use would look somewhat like:

Shade - 50/50 mix Shade/Base - Base - 50/50 mix Base/Highlight - Highlight

In general what I'll give you in this tutorial is the three colours as if used as simple triads. If you prefer the more elaborate approach just add in the intermediate steps mentioned above, or start from an even darker Shade or end with a lighter Highlight.

If fractions in brackets are given these are just approximations. Just try what looks best to you.

Note: I haven't documented every single step for this Colour Guide, so you might want to refer to some of the guides I wrote earlier. To do so just go to the top of the page where you'll find a link to a page containing direct links to all the Colour Guides I wrote to date.

I start out with a roughly 50/50 mix of VMC 70.822 German Camouflage Black Brown and VGC 72.062 Earth. That mix is then highlighted with increasing amounts of 72.062 Earth up to the pure colour, which in turn then gets mixed with VMC 70.988 Khaki for final highlights. As ever you can go as dark or as light as you wish, maybe even using different ratios on different figures to add to that campaign look.

The next step is the back packs. First they get a coat of pure VGC 72.062 Earth, which is then followed up by VMC 70.988 Khaki. For highlights I then mix in AK11351 Wood Base. 

Then we turn our attention to the red leather parts, wich include the ammo pouches, the belt including the carrying straps, as well as the rims of the back packs. Here I start out with VMC 70.985 Hull Red, followed by VMC 70.982 Cavalry Brown. Next steps are VMC 70.818 Red Leather, 70.981 Orange Brown with final dots of 70.929 Light Brown.

For the skin we use VMC 70.804 Beige Red as a base coat, followed by a thinned down wash of Citadel Contrast Guilliman Flesh, followed again by Beige Red. Then increasing amounts of AK11050 Light Flesh are mixed into the Beige Red up to almost pure Light Flesh. If you feel the contrast is too stark you can always tone it down again with a heavily dilluted glaze of Guilliman Flesh.

Next it's time to paint the Adrian helmet. Again I start out with a base coat of VMC 70.822 German Camouflage Dark Brown, which then gets mixed with increasing amounts of, what I think is, VMC 70.881 Yellow Green… could be any brownish green though. The important part is not to go too light, else it'll draw attention away from your carefully painted face. As before you can use a glaze of the mid tone to tone it all down again should you've gone too light.

For the rifle I use AK11106 Mahagony with highlights of AK11119 Cork mixed into the base colour. You can of course use the Vallejo equivalents of the same name, or go for your own recipe for redish wood.

The water bottle gets a coat of VMC 70.304 Track Primer, which then gets mixed with VMC 70.987 for some subtle highlights. For the leather boots I started out by mixing VMC 70.822 with German Camouflage Dark Brown, followed by VMC 70.984 Flat Brown and finally highlights of the latter mixed with AK11119 Cork.

To finish the skin and breathe a little more life to the figure, I like to use glazes. A glaze of VGC 72.012 for example is used on the lips, the cheeks, where the hands meet the sleeves, around the neck and under the helmet. A light glaze of 72.015 Hexed Lichen is used under the eyes and along the nose to help give a the impression of a tired, battle weary individual. Finally a glaze of VMc 70.204 Track Primer is used on the chin to represent stubble. 

So, as ever I hope this was useful to some of you and if you have any questions, comments or critique you can of course use the comment section below or hit me up on BlueSky under https://bsky.app/profile/moiterei.bsky.social

Have a good time and see you soon… I hope.