How to go about painting a WW2 German Infantryman
August 19, 2010 by johnlyons
John takes you through how he plans to paint his Bolt Action German Army when he manages to get one! This is using Warlord Games fantastic new plastic German Infantry set. John shows how to achieve a simple and effective uniform scheme while also adding a few personal touches to make this soldier unique. He also talks to us about basing and why it makes such a big difference to the model by creating a narrative around the model (just what is he doing?)
So sit back and enjoy this 3 Colours Up.
nice to see you with a brush in your hand again John!, i like how you give a breakdown of the exact gear he is carrying!
I only skipped through the vid, but when time is permitting i will watch it in full. I enjoyed the Space Wolf Terminator one you did ages ago, it’s good to see a long/real time painting video again. It’s also great to see historical mini’s getting some attention.
I love the scenic base very nice indeed 🙂
I love the tutorial. But aren’t German uniforms supposed to be Feldgrau which is more a sort of faded olive green. Why the decision to paint the uniform purely grey ?
depending on what theatre of ww2 and what year. so he probrobly researched a spicific theater in late war. like normandy late war.
No, aulus is totally correct. Feldgrau was used through the entire war. The Germans NEVER worn ‘grey’ during WWII. The common belief that they did stems from two primary sources: every Hollywood movie made about WWII shows the German uniform as grey and the Germans reference to grey was a hold-over term from an older pre-WWI uniform.
Feldgrau is GREEN. As far as the Heer goes, the only other colour used in any large quantity (other than splinter camo) was by the troops that served in the Deutsches Afrikakorps. That start out as a yellow olive when issued…although it faded a lot in the harsh sun of the desert.
http://www.sofmilitary.co.uk/reenactors/index.asp If you have a look through these guys’ German kit you’ll see the shade of green on the tunics. However to look at the kit from a distance it will appear more grey than green. But Blitz is spot on they all worse a shade of grey-green on their uniforms.
Ignore the cat but this shows the colour well.[IMG
[/IMG]
No idea what happened there.
Anyway, here’s the colour, ignore the cat.
i like that theme. im striping the pain from my ig models that i painted when i was 12. crappy but not bad for being that age anyway. i was thinking on a german based coolour theme
when I saw how long the vid was I realised I did not have time to watch it. So I just stuck around to get the history lessen that comes with all WW2 minis. It was a great first 3 mins.
For anyone interested in a book full of useful reference and information check this book out:
Deutsche Soldaten: Uniforms, Equipment and Personal Items of the German Soldier 1939-1945
Very nice. Have you ever thought about doing a reaper mini on this?
I’ll have a proper look at this tomorrow. Your long painting tutorials are probably my favourite kind of BoW video.
I also have fond memories of those epic Space Wolf terminator tutorials you did.
Watched it and i have to say: Wow – wonderful. Cheers for the lessons. I’d like to send the BoW team an e-mail, but somehow their “contact us” page is broken – any link to the correct e-mail?
Stephan
community@beastsofwar.com
check your inbox, John 🙂
1:21:50 “You can see him peeking out there.” had to laught when I heard that.
German Panzerfaustschütze is watching you! xD
*clap clap clap* bravo bravo~
That “straw” looks more like a blond mans bum fluff though. So you might want to go investigate how they make that stuff.
i dont want to incase your right QQ
Great! 🙂 Have been waiting for a long painting vid for such a long time, but still… We want MOAR!! 😀 You should paint some Mantic minis – elves, undead, dwarf characters… Keep up the good work 🙂
Awesome job! It was fun watching you paint him. The camo helmet looks perfect, as does the shadow around his eyes. I love the basing as well, very evocative of Normandy.
More historical painting videos please. How about Napoleonic painting?
Cheers John, Cup of tea and a painting vid, very relaxing 🙂
Really amazing and useful video. Still new to the painting scene and videos like this are a gem.
#win lets hope he talks more since he is so passionate about ww2 🙂
Great job John.Love the videos keep them coming And take some Jägermeister for that man flu.
Any reason why there’s only 360/480 in the def choices?
Not sure why YouTube didn’t process the HD for this. We may have to split it in 2 and re-upload it as a 2 parter.
Watch out making up back stories for all your models, only makes it harder when you loose them in battle…
Heh… its so funny listening to you guys. Throwing german words in english sentences. Usually i only hear it the other way round. XD
Wonderful video, lots of great painting and historical information.
I love how you left the scene setting till the very end, it really does bring the figure to life.
Glad there was a wee bit on painting camo, though a short video dedicated to it would be nice as it has always been an utter nightmare for me. Just the way my brain seems to work I find it very hard to put down natural looking patterns.
My random blobs often end up looking very similar and I end up trying to break them up with more shapes so it all turns into some kind of horrific art deco mess rather than a clean natural look.
Thanks for hanging in there despite the man flu 🙂 Great tutorial and history lesson!
Beutiful! great model, really nice work with the basing and paintjob!
and as always great with some WW2 stuffs..
some things to have in mind when building and painting WW2 miniatures, especially the germans are the mixing of equipment.
In late war terms, when the german warmachine was about to collapse a lot of solidiers where looting and scavenging equipment from the fallen (friend or foe alike)… and with the forming of Kampfgruppen (Combat groups) where all solidiers in the current area where counted in as infantrymen. Tank crews without tanks, cavalry without horses, pioneers without tools, motorized cavalry without veichels and all the likes where thrown into combat as infantry. this is something to remeber and that you could have som fun with.
I have painted a 20 man infantry squad of the warlord miniatures. painting some of the solidiers uniform Black and converted their headware to the tank troops barret. just to give the impression of desperation. that the Wehrmacht didn´t have the resources to supply tankcrews with tanks…
sorry for the ramble i tend to do that -.- anyways hope u enjoy and to John: more WW2 Stuff. i really like it!
Great result, thanks for putting it up. I’m hoping to see more painting tutorials for a selection of ranges coming up.
You don’t do eyes?
Very nicely produced and commented paint tutorial John. Was waiting anxiously for it. Perhaps a final video once you’ve painted all of the box contents, just to give us a taste of what the sprues look like all doctored up?
Overall, awesome video and great paint tutorial and history lesson! Perhaps some of the metal models from Warlord in the future, or some FOW 15’s? Can’t wait to see more WWII stuff.
~iPaint
John, are you wearing underwear today?
well, it gets so warm in the studio…. comfort is paramount 😉 lol
as always John nice painting and video and more history is totally nice. so keep it coming John your are the bets ever man ^^
Great video, John. I love listening and half watching the BoW stuff while I paint or work on miniatures. The German looks great for such easy techniques. Very effective and quick in order to complete a good sized, beautiful army in a short time. I would also like to thank you for the inspiration as I will use some of your techniques for some 1918 Russian sailors I wanted to speed paint.
The history lesson was great. Very helpful for starting WWII German players. Besides the bad quality of the fabrics towards the end of the war, it might also be quite interesting to know that Germans soldiers used everything they could find to get dressed at the very end. A hotchpotch of different uniform types and camouflage patterns were often used and whatever did the job…
One more thing and if I may be honest…I am not that enthusiastic about the clump foliage. Clump foliage tends to look like one mass of something to dense to be a bush or hedge. May I recommend the heki-flor foliage by Heki for any next diorama? The product is meant for low bushes on model train tables, but you can make some good larger bushes with it with only very little substructure and you can ever use it for ace foliage on trees (The company is German therefore so is the link, but maybe that would help: http://www.heki-kittler.de/heki_flor.php. Here is a great example for its use on trees:http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=5195.0). This is foliage sort of stuck together on a light net structure that you call pull apart any way you want.
thumbs up Sir.. alittle long but viewable good to see ya painting again (realtime) liked the washes make for easer lighting in the fig. so what on the list next, something Orc or WW2 ?
Hey John! I quite simply flipped trough it quickly.. Panzerfaust 60 was worked out quite simply by how far it went fairly accurate. Panzerfaust 30 had one hole for 30m distance. Panzerfaust 60 had three holes, farthest with accuracy was 60m. If you know the Panzerfaust 150, they were accurate to 150m.
Incredible detail on your painting.. Love it all! Bravo!
Hi John, never mind all the intricate fuss of painting and then building the model! You do it simple and with such ease and the end result is just brilliant! Well done for sharing your talent on this brilliant site! Thanks again. I look forward to the next painting tutorial and the next and the next……………………..
Great Video, I can’t wait to get my Soviet Bolt Action Army through the post and try out some of those techniques xD
Spectacular tutorial. Would be great to see more of this sort of painting. There’s so much out there with the heavily shaded look. Enjoyable to see something a little more toned down.
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