British 1980's Infantry

Well, now for something non-Soviet for a bit of a change.

I always like to have some infantry finished before I try and tackle the forces vehicles. It doesn't always work out like that - but it's too easy to end up with a stack of cool tanks and MICVs and have no squaddies to do the actual fighting.

Hence I've been holding off on all my British kit, However, I recently came into the possession of some Liberation British figures and a single Platoon 20 chappie firing a Blowpipe missile. These rose very quickly to the top of my to-do list and hence here they are. The aim was to have them look something like this:



This image is taken from issue 2 of the Falklands War magazine and is of a British Paratrooper.

I also used the British DPM material as a guide (from my 28 April blog update) as well as this guide which I found on this excellent blog: Winter of '79

I didn't follow the tutorial word for word - but did find it very useful.

PAINTING

PAINTING

Once again my biggest concern the British DPM and I'm still not 100% sure of this lot, but at least it looks more like British DPM than US Woodlands. These were painted using my more traditional method.

If I had my tiem again I'd paint on the green cam swirls first and then the brown.


1. Black Undercoat – Citadel Spray
2. DPM Uniform – Base colour – Vallejo Khaki. Only the base colour was painted at this point.
3. Helmets – Vallejo Reflective Green (I think)
4. Flesh - Vallejo Flat Flesh
5. Webbing & Pouches - Vallejo Green Grey
6. Bren woodwork - Vallejo Beige Brown
7. SLR woodwork - Vallejo German Cam Black Brown
8. Weapon's metalwork - Vallejo Black Grey
9. The whole figure (excluding flesh) was washed with a Black magic wash
10. Highlight pretty much everything with original colours
11. Paint Citadel Ogyrn Flesh wash on all flesh and highlight with more Vallejo Flesh. )I then went back and added another wash over the top of this as well.
12. At this point I painted the DPM pattern over the highlighted DPM base uniform colour. The brown colour was done first – Vallejo Flat Brown is fairly large swirly like bits. Next was equally sized green swirls using Vallejo Luftwaffe Cam. Green. Finally thin lines of the black Colour using – Citadel Chaos Black. I followed the tutorial for this order - but if I had to do it again - or for the next lot - I'd do the green swirls first and then the brown
13. I highlighted the helmet scrim quickly using a Vallejo Khaki drybrush
12. Beret & Hair - I Vallejo Burnt Cad. Red for the beret and then on the one chap whose hair you could see I again used Vallejo Khaki - adding a bit of white for highlights.

Here are some pictures of the completed figures:


Platoon 20 Blowpipe chap


LibMin Signallers


LibMin chaps with Sterling SMGs


LibMin chaps with Bren guns


LibMin chaps with Gimpies


Libmin chaps with Carl Gustav MAWs









Pretty happy with these guys - not perfect by a long shot but good enough for me!

In honour of these guys being useable in either Cold War Hot games or Falkland Islands games I've decided to include the following youtube links:











Hope you enjoy this post

Have fun

Richard