WWII BRITISH UNIFORM COLORS SET

Battledress and Denison on one palette

The British soldier of the Second World War wore a coarse woolen battledress in a subdued khaki, to which airborne units added the camouflaged Denison smock. That was sprayed by hand, so the shade varied from one garment to the next - which is why the set offers two variants of its base at once, the sand-leaning Denison Tan Base and the green-brown Denison Base Opt.2. Irregular blotches are then sprayed over them in the shades Gunship Green and Red Brown.

The rest of the kit

British Uniform Base covers the basic tone of the blouse and trousers, and British Light Sand serves for lightening the tops of the folds, for sandy variants of equipment and for canvas webbing. Six bottles thus cover a figure from helmet to gaiters, whether it is a paratrooper over Arnhem, an infantryman in Normandy or a tank crewman in North Africa.

The shades come in 17 ml and are built on an acrylic binder intended specifically for figures, that is with a fine pigment that does not clog small details such as buckles, buttons or the creases of a face. They are applied with a brush in two or three thin coats; for the camouflage blotches of the Denison, a brush tip wiped dry works well, so that the edges of the blotches stay soft, as they were on the original too.

Why paint every figure a little differently

Woolen cloth changed markedly with washing and sunlight, from the almost brown tone of freshly issued kit to a faded dirty beige after a year of wear. In a single scene it is therefore worth shifting every soldier a little way apart, even if only from one bottle topped up with a drop of a lighter color.

The package consists of the bottles alone; the figures are sold separately.