DPM Sapper Joe's Way

.

I've been following Sapper Joe's blog and have to admit that I am really impressed by Joe's skill at painting DPM. Tricky at the best of times, he has really pulled it off in 20mm.

 Joe's DPM painting skills (photo used with permission)

Combat Miniatures 20mm British (Corp5 & Urbn7)

Chatting with Joe, he based painting his DPM on the tutorial from the now defunct Mongrel Miniatures website. I've summarised this tutorial below:

1) Undercoat the figure black

2) Paint the whole uniform and helmet with Vallejo 921 English Uniform.

3) Add green blotches of Vallejo 894 Russian Green all over the uniform,

4) Follow with brown blotches of Vallejo 822 SS Camo Black Brown.

5) Don't make the blotches of either colour too big, so as to totally obscure the base colour.

6) Highlight the base colour with Coat d' Arms 225 Khaki

7) Repeat the process with the dark green blobs, applying a highlight of Vallejo 886 Green Grey.

8) When applying these highlights, don't obscure the colour underneath, as this is where the depth of colour comes from. Try to keep the highlight surrounded by a line of the base colour on each layer.

9) Highlight the brown blotches with Vallejo 984 Flat Brown and then add some irregular black swirls. Be careful not to make these too prominent or too thick as they will dominate the whole uniform if you do. Aim for single strokes of your paintbrush for each swirl, with enough paint on it to complete it in one stroke. At this point I painted the exposed parts of the helmet and roll at the base of the webbing with Russian Green as a basecoat.

10) Paint the webbing with Foundry Granite (midtone).

11) Highlight webbing and puttees a highlight of Vallejo 886 Green Grey.

12) Drybrush helmet netting black

13) Paint scrim muted natural colours – earth/tan etc

14) Outline pockets, joins between jacket and trousers, straps and belts etc to separate the parts of the figure and show off the separate items of dress and equipment with a dark colour.

15) Para Berets – Vallejo 33/926 Red

British DPM

Mark adds:

At the end of the day the choice of colours and overall effect is a matter of personal taste when representing camo in smaller scales. If you reduce the DPM camo scheme above within an image editor, you'll notice that the colours start to merge as you make it smaller. This happens in reality when the naked eye views camo over distance. The green, tan, brown, black of DPM, appears as green/tan/ black at 50 metres, green/black at 100 metres and just plain green at 200 metres.

The only change I would make to the tutorial above is that the puttees should be Vallejo 921 English Uniform. I would suggest that depending on the effect you want to achieve, use green as your base colour rather than the 'tan', then use brown blotches to partly cover the tan and green. That way you don't end up with lots of 'tan' in difficult to reach folds and creases.

Highlighting each colour in 20mm and below is, let's be honest, a pain in the proverbial. From my own experience with DPM combats I suggest these rough and ready methods:

1) Use a pointed detail brush to 'paint' Citadel Devlan Mud wash directly into creases and folds.
OR
2) Once you've painted the figure, wash all over with watered Devlan Mud, then highlight using the base colours again.
OR
3) Once the figure has had the basic colours painted, lightly drybush all over with Vallejo 819 Iraqi Sand. Pay particular emphasis to knees and elbows.
OR
4) 1 followed by 3 above.

Now for some eye watering DPM on W40K Cadians take a look at the Dakka Dakka Forum (click here).

I'll take another look at DPM and the variations you can bring to your miniatures in order to differentiate between units/ factions in future posts.

Joe, thanks once again.

Cheers

Mark

.