Unteroffizier, Großdeutschland 1942 - Painting the Field Grey Tunic - Part 1

In this instalment, I will reveal my process of utilizing my signature set of colours from AK Interactive to render a Field Grey tunic. 

To create a greenish-blue tone of field grey typical in most early war tunics, I will concoct a mixture of Field Grey Base #1, Grey Green and Dark Prussian Blue. Take caution to add only a modicum of Dark Prussian Blue as it is extremely overpowering.

The colours were mixed on a metal surface and the mixture was allowed to dry. Once dried, I added Mr Colour Leveling Thinner 400 to dissolve the paint, rendering it usable for airbrushing.  

A flat brush was used to draw the paint from the metal surface and transferred to the airbrush. The dilution rate is a 1:3 paint to thinner ratio.

The high dilution of paint was necessary for two reasons; firstly to allow a smoother discharge of paint from the airbrush nozzle and second being that I only needed a thin veil of paint to cover the surface so that the effects of the underpainting can peep through. 

Truth be told, with the exception of Tamiya acrylics, I have never attained good results airbrushing  with acrylic paints until most recently using the "Lazarus" method. This opens new possibilities as one could now "resurrect" dried up acrylic paints and reuse them as lacquer-based paint. If you are still sceptical about the results, just look at the following photos and you can see that it boasts a smooth and matt finish.

That is all for now. In the next instalment, I will cover the shading and highlighting of the figure using the brush.

Cheers,

Calvin