American Infantry step by step with wash technique.

My next American project after the Priests is to get some infantry done. It gives me a pause from painting US Tanks. I used the crew of the Priests to test out a technique.
First I cleaned and filed off any flash and then painted the entire figure with Khaki. As you can see I mount the figures for easier handling.

Base Colours.
Khaki over the entire figure. Then the webbing, Skin, Boots and wood on rifles, shovel (I used the same colour for them both), then Brown Violet and Panzer Grey for metal parts on rifles, tommy guns and a pistol.

Looks very basic and flat at this stage.

Ink wash over base colours is next. I mixed Brown shade with some black shade. Just to make a darker brown really and painted it over the entire miniature.

You could make the choice to stop at this point as they look not bad at all. A big improvement over the flat look before this step. But they looked a little dirty to me. These pics actually show that I painted the Brown Violet back over the Helmets and Zooks. Actually the front 2 figures with rifles where taken to the next stage


Next was painting towards a highlight.
I wanted my figures to pop a little more so I go over them with the base colours again but this time painting less area. Just looking for more raised surfaces really. I added Khaki to the Brown Violet to highlight the Helmets and Zooks and also used German Camo Beige to add small highlights to the Khaki Jackets.

Close up they look crude but this is a super duper enlargement. Next is basing but that will be in another Post.

All  colours used (Black Shade is missing from this line up). In retrospect after the base colours you could consider spraying (or painting) a gloss varnish to help the ink style wash flow. Some gamers are using that technique for shading German Late War tanks so it may work just as well on these figures.  
Cheers