Painting Waffen SS Pea Dot

[TheRedBaron]

Hi chaps...

I was directed to this esteemed forum by one of your members as Im about to start painting some display models for a company and Im after tips or painting guides for painting Waffen SS pea dot.

Im painting up some 30mm figures so Im looking for a 54mm painting guide.

Any tips or help would be greatly recieved!

Many Thanks

RED

 

[mahross]

Hey mate. Welcome hopefully someone will help.

Ross

 

[pkw4]

Hi
You should come to the Dublin competition on 29th May 2005. you can see a wide variety of figures and pick up some useful tips there from some extremely talented people.
Hope to see you there
Roberto Spaolonzi

 

[thegoodsgt]

Hi Piers,

I'm about half-way through a figure right now that features a pea pattern, and I'll post photos in a week or so. Here are some random thoughts about what I've learned so far:

- There are different types of pea patterns, so identify which one you're going to paint, and then study photos to figure out the best approach to laying down each color.

- "Scale effect," a concept typically discussed only among aircraft modelers, is incredibly important with a 54mm figure. It's easy for the colors you mix up to have too be too intense or have too much contrast. Study clear photos of actual uniforms and notice that most of the colors have approximately the same value and intensity.

- Make the dots as small as possible. In scale they are quite small. My first attempts resulted in dots that would probably be 3 inches in diameter rather than 1 inch.

I hope this helps.

 

[nagashino]

Hi Steven

Scale colour and scale effect - now there's a topic that has exercised jaws in the model making world for years.

It would be interesting to hear other planeteers' views on this thorny subject.

Cheers

Phil

 

[TheRedBaron]

Cheers Steve, some good points, Ta matey.

Im lucky enough to have a PeaDot suit to work from and several picture references, what Im wondering about is whether to highlight the colours that I apply or to only highlight the base colours, say the pale brown. If that makes any sense...

 

[Anders Heintz]

Hola Red,

The key to painting camoflauge uniforms is to break down the patterns, figure out which color should be painted first and in what order they appear, usually the lightest color is easiest to start with. If I remember correctly the pea pattern has seveal colors undearneath the dots, so paint that pattern first, and I would highlight and shade each of the colors in the basic pattern under the dots first, then once the basic is done move on to doing the dot part.

Gotta be sweet to have an original for reference!

 

[thegoodsgt]

The dots that I've painted are far too small to be shaded or highlighted individually. I guess you could mix up three variations of each dot color and apply them to the appropriate highlighted/shaded area, but I don't think the differences among them wouldn't be all that noticable.

What I'm going to do is use a series of filters to shade various areas, and then I'll outline pockets, edges, etc.

Google on terms such as "german militaria" to locate companies that sell original uniforms. That'll give you some ideas.

 

[thegoodsgt]

Okay, just took a few quick shots of the in-progress figure, without any shading or outlining.

Looking at these photos, two more thoughts come to mind.

First, make sure all the dots are the same size. Second, make sure you're painting oval dots and not little splotches as I've done. (Although in my defense, you're looking at the figure under more magnification that you'd have if viewing the figure in person, but at least you see the technique.)

Like anything, it's really harder to do this than you might think. I'm not really happy with this attempt, but I'll learn and do better next time.