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| Four complete divisions in a shallow A4 Tuff box. |
Whereas the aim in real life would be to camouflage men and vehicles and to blend into the background, that would be totally counter-productive for such tiny models. The colour scheme needed to be lighter, contrasting and simpler than in real life. I also wanted to avoid using sand or static grass in a way that would be out of scale with the models.
The bases were intended to be dioramic, so my first step was to arrange and stick the models down. Here I made a mistake. I should have put slivers of card under the vehicles so they were of a height with the infantry and I could then have applied filler between the models to hide the base edges and level everything up. By putting filler only around the infantry, I ended up with a lumpy effect.
I attempted to disguise this problem by adding irregular areas of sand to represent scrub. This was a partial success, but the end result looks more like bramble patches on Wimbledon Common than Belgian fields.
With the models, filler and sand added, I gave everything an overall wet brush of dark brown. I then dry-brushed the vehicles using light versions of the historical base coats with no attempt to add secondary camouflage colours. I block-painted the infantry in 2 or 3 colours, but one would probably have done. This approach was essentially the same as I've used for larger scales that I've based before painting.
On the plus side, I think my decisions to restrict the colours and make the models 'pop', and to avoid out of scale texturing, were correct.
On the minus side, I should have pre-based the vehicles to match the infantry as explained, and then I wouldn't have had to add the scrub. I should also have chosen a less vivid green for the grass.
