Japanese Infantry WWII Figures Set

Four tones of the Japanese field uniform

The infantryman of the Imperial Japanese Army wore a mustard khaki blouse, which quickly lost its saturation in the Pacific sun and damp. Painting such a figure stands or falls on whether you manage to play out the difference between the shadowed folds and the faded areas on the shoulders and the back. A uniform expanse of khaki reliably kills a figure, however good the casting is. The four paints in this package are ordered into exactly such a tonal scale.

It contains Pale Yellow Green with the code FS 33481, Field Grey Shadow FS 34086, Rust Ochre and Khaki Green. Two of the shades are thus tied to the federal standard and two add a warm rusty and green tone, which lets the uniform be shaded according to how long the figure had been in the field. All four come from the maker's figure range, that is, from paints made for fine brush work.

Modeling the folds step by step

The best result comes from working from the darkest shade as an overall base, through a middle tone laid on so that the dark one stays in the recesses, up to the lightest paint on the raised edges only. The rusty tone suits faded places at the collar and the pockets. It pays to lay the last pass on heavily thinned and in two layers, otherwise a hard blotch arises.

The Pacific setting was no kinder to uniforms than combat was. Damp, salt and constant washing shifted the fabric toward lighter and grayer tones, and the shoulders and the back suffered most. The set offers enough range for a whole squad to be painted with figures at various degrees of wear.