Andy's Grey Army: Day of Days

Band of Brothers. That epic mini-series really captured my attention, and from the start I wanted to create a scene that portrayed the feel of the show.

The title of this piece, and one of the episodes, revolves around the final preparations for the parachute drop on D-Day. The scene in that episode that really struck me involves the paratroopers preparing their equipment on the airfield, with Lt. Winters helping everyone up to board the aircraft.

So, the scene is simple. It involves a couple of paratroopers making their final equipment checks with an officer coming to see them off. They look sykyward; maybe in anticipation, or maybe they are watching the first wave take off.

The Jeep is the Tamiya kit with a few added missing details and the steering turned slightly. I added the Mantis Miniatures jeep stowage set, which includes a folded canvas roof and some baseball equipment to put in the back, as well as some other items of equipment.

Painting was pretty straightforward as I wanted the jeep to show minimal wear; I assumed it would be fairly new, after all. Restraining the weathering was harder than it looked as there is a tendancy for it to look toy-like. Just some subtle modulation and a light dust layer did the trick.

The two figures on the airfield are both from Minisoldiers, and all of the equipment strewn around comes with the bending figure. The officer is a Soga Miniatures figure and it, along with the standing figure, had their heads modified to look up.

I read somewhere that paratroopers would lay out all of their equipment on a blanket whilst gearing up. That way they would immediately see that they had everything once the blanket was clear. I rolled out some putty for the blankets and pressed down all of the equipment into it.

As you would expect, painting of this equipment takes some time. Painting this, and the Airborne uniform is explained in more detail in previous blog post, here.

One item I hadn't tackled before was the inflatable "Mae West". Painting yellow is always a tricky affair but the key is to use a flesh undercoat before the yellow goes on. This really helps maintain the vibrancy of the colour, without it becoming washed out.

Another thing to consider is the shade colour. The opposite complimentary tone for yellow on a colour wheel is violet. Now this may sound odd, but used sparingly, this really does work. As always, I tried this out on a spare torso before committing to the figures.

This is the palette I finally used for the yellow.