PEA DOT PATTERN/DOT44 (ERBSENMUSTER)

The last major German camouflage pattern

The pea-dot pattern, in German Erbsenmuster, appeared only in 1944 and became the last camouflage introduced across the board in the German armed forces. Unlike the older patterns it was not printed by hand through stencils but by machine, so the dots have a regular size and spacing. It was made up mainly into a two-piece field suit, a jacket and trousers worn over the uniform.

The ground in three tones

The set divides the work into two stages. First a brown ground is created from three shades: the dark Grim Brown for the shadows in the folds, the medium Chocolate Brown as the main tone and the light Cork on the crests of the cloth, where the light falls. That produces a soft volume, which holds the figure together even from a distance.

The dots at the end

The remaining three colors are meant for the pattern itself: light green dots, light brown patches in the Orange Tan shade and dark green points. They are drawn with the tip of a fine brush or stippled with a cut-down brush, always only after the ground is finished, so that they keep a clean edge. The density of the dots decreases toward the shadow, as otherwise the pattern visually flattens the volume you built up so laboriously before.

Who the set is for

It is aimed at figures of German units of the last year of the war in any scale, and it also suits helmet covers and shelter quarters of the same cloth. For an even size of the dots, a brush with short, bluntly cut hair proves itself, with which the paint is laid down rather than painted. Try the rhythm out on an offcut of plastic before you start on the figure itself.