Painting some Gebirgsjager

I bought a platoon of Gebirgsjager from Gorgon Studios last year and started painting them over the last couple of days. I've been planning to build a table, terrain and paint the miniatures for a WWII Crete scenario for quite a while. I've finished off the Fallschirmjager and posted about those already. I am planning to reinforce them with some airlanded Gebirgsjager - I'll post some pics of the Junkers and gliders that I have finished sometime soon too. Once I've done the Gebirgsjagers, then I'll make a start on the Allied defenders (Brits and Kiwis).

Following some advice from a kindly soul on TMP, here is a list of the paint colours that I have used. The reason for blogging about the colours is that it saves from having to guess what colours I used when I finally get around to finish the platoon in a year's time! If you are interested too, here are the colours I used; all paints are Vallejo Model Colour.

I started with a squad of 4 models to try out the colours. I'm quite happy with the finished result (with the usual caveats about the standard of my painting and failing eyesight!)

Here is a list of the base colours applied:

• Cap and tunic - 70830 German Fieldgrey
• Shorts - 70977 Desert Yellow
• Flesh - 70860 Medium Fleshtone
• Boots and webbing - 70822 German Cam Black Brown
• Socks, breadbag and ammo pouches - 70988 Khaki
• Rifle - 70983 Flat Earth and 70995 German Grey
• Water bottle - 70843 Cork Brown and 70995 German Grey
• Gas mask canister and canteen - 70894 Russian Green
• Bootlaces - 70919 Foundation White

Here are two models with just the base colours applied. At this stage, I'm not too concerned with some of the sloppy painting because it gets covered up during the next stage.

After I have applied the base colours, I use Agrax Earthshade from Games Workshop to give the whole model a brown wash. This has the effect of creating areas of shadow, it darkens the base colours down a bit and also covers up some of the messy brushwork from step 1. Here are the same two models with the wash applied.

The next step is highlighting and picking out some of the detail, where I try to be a bit more careful with the brush. I used the same base colour as the first highlight on the "higher" areas of the model, then will often use the base colour mixed with a bit of something lighter for the final highlight e.g. add some 70886 Green Grey mixed with Fieldgrey to highlight the cap and tunic.  White was used to pick out the cap badges and collar flashes.

The additional flesh tones I used were 70927 Dark Flesh (can anyone tell me why Dark Flesh is lighter than Medium Fleshtone?) and 70955 Flat Flesh for the lightest parts. The only other colors used were 70825 German Cam Pale Brown for the wood on the rifle and Games Workshop's Boltgun Metal dry-brushed onto the metal parts of the rifle and MP40. Here is what the final result looks like:

These last few photos were taken as the sun was setting so there is a bit of extra atmospheric shadowing!  Off to start painting some more now....