Vietnam Tiger Stripes and Jungle Plants

I have to admit Masterbox are one of my favourite plastic figure manufacturers; the subject matter, attention to detail and imaginative poses are a breath of fresh air and I am always excited to see the announcement of a new set of figures from them.

This particular set, MB35107 “Head for the Huey”, has been around for a while now. Having a big interest in the Vietnam conflict, as soon as I saw this I knew it would be right up my street so immediately bought two. The set consists of a wounded figure being helped by two comrades, what looks like a local guide throwing a grenade, and the subject of this article; a running figure looking back over his shoulder, presumably at the sound of the approaching extraction helicopter; maybe even an approaching enemy. You can almost feel the tension just looking at the box art.

CONSTRUCTION

As is my usual approach, I spent quite some time cleaning up and re-scribing the details on this figure to sharpen up some of the softness of the moulding.

I covered this technique in detail in my US Airborne blog so won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say, all of the moulded detail was sharpened up using a blade to recreate undercuts and make the figure sculpting really pop. A word of caution here, Masterbox plastic is very soft; you have to take extra care whilst doing this compared to say, a Dragon or Minart figure. You can see in the accompanying side by side photos the difference this makes; a process I believe pays dividends when it comes to the painting stage.

Most of the strapping and webbing was replaced with lead strip, along with etch buckles and the buttons and press-studs on the grenade vest were replaced with discs punched from foil.

I thought the kit-supplied M79 “blooper” was a little soft so I replaced this with a crisper Dragon item. To further enhance the details I added several items from the wonderful Bravo6 range; the boonie hat, waterbottles and smoke grenades are all from this manufacturer and they are sublime. Bravo6 are the go-to producer of Vietnam figures and accessories and are, in my opinion, essential to dress up a project like this.

What I thought would make or break the believability on this figure is the head, I spent quite some time rummaging through my box of Hornet heads to find one that suited the pose and looked natural. As the human head is turned to the extremity, the Sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck becomes more pronounced, a feature that Hornet has captured perfectly with this head from their set HH18.

PAINTING

I pretty much knew from the start that I wanted to paint this figure in Tiger Stripe camo, so set out to find all I could on how to do this. Most of the online resources said it is one of the more daunting patterns to paint; hopefully the simplified technique I will show you will make it somewhat easier.

Whenever I paint a colour scheme I haven’t done before I usually do a few tests on some spare figure torsos. This is a great way of seeing how or even if, colours work together. If you also block in any adjacent equipment it will give you an instant understanding of how your finished figure will look without any of the risk.

I have many books covering uniforms of the Vietnam War and one of the best resources for this type of camo is “Tiger Patterns: A guide to the Vietnam War’s Tigerstripe Combat Fatigue Patterns and Uniforms” by Sgt Richard Johnson, published by Schiffer Publishing. Be warned though; if you are only going to be doing this pattern a few times a book such as this is probably overwhelming for what you need. It covers an amazing array of both official and locally produced patterns, and is squarely aimed at the collector market rather than a modelling one. That said, I found it very useful to try to understand the way this pattern worked and the excellent photos are perfect to getting the colours right. The pattern I decided to try and replicate is called the Late war Heavyweight Dense pattern, or LHD and appears to consist of just three colours.

From my research, normal modelling convention would seem to dictate sketching in the dark stripe and green pattern then painting around them with the lighter outline colour. My philosophy is the reverse of this; it is far easier to cover a light colour with a darker one than vice-versa. The majority of the painting of this figure was done with Vallejo acrylics and I usually add a touch of Tamiya Flat Base X-21 into all of the colours to ensure the uniform components dry dead flat.

For the base colour for the pattern I used 884 Stone Grey.

Once dry I then outlined around all detail, seams etc. with 889 US Olive Drab.

The reason for this is to differentiate the separate pieces of cloth that make up the uniform. As you progress with the painting; especially with a complex pattern; it will become more and more difficult to “read” the figure outline and detail, this step helps with that but also gives you a demarcation line to paint up to. Very rarely will a pattern that is printed on one large piece of fabric match up at the seam in a piece of clothing once sewn together, this is good for us because replicating this mismatch adds to the believability of the pattern and I try and incorporate this into my camouflage painting where I can.

Taking note of the size and proportion, I then proceed to add the dark stripes of the pattern using 862 Black Grey (pure black is far too harsh a colour and I very rarely use this on its own). Keep an eye on paint consistency here, it is a good idea to just sketch in the main pattern then refine it with another thin coat rather than trying to do it with one thick coat.

Once happy with the placement and proportion of the dark stripes I proceeded to partly fill-in the lighter gaps using 924 Russian Uniform WW2, constantly referring to the pattern photo as I go.

Keep in mind we are trying to leave a consistently thin lighter outline to everything. Try and be precise but don’t worry too much at this stage, the fact we are using “pure” colours, i.e. paint directly from the bottles - not mixed, means that any inevitable touch-ups are easy to remedy.

So after a few caffeine-free sessions you should have your basic pattern all mapped out and should just be able to still see the Olive Drab outlining we did at the beginning. We will now enhance that and try and make the pattern a little less toy-like by applying a darker “filter” to the pattern. For this I brush a much thinned version of the Olive Drab outline colour over the whole piece, you are looking for a very subtle staining of the surface – definitely not a wash consistency, more akin to dirty water. Don’t forget to add the Tamiya Flat Base to keep everything matt.

This process has the effect of toning down the colours and “blending” them somewhat, making them appear more life-like. The main thing to remember is to try to avoid tide-marks at all costs, what we are doing is subtly staining the overall tone of the pattern consistently, not applying this like a wash.

This same Olive Drab mix is now used to reinforce the shadow and outline areas (usually in several applications) to build up the contrast and shade the figure. It’s up to you how far you want to go with this contrast (you can always add a little black to the darkest shadow areas if you need to) but we will bring back the highlights next so you can always switch back and forth to make some areas pop out.

 

The highlights are achieved with the original three colours we used for the pattern; thinned versions of these are now painted back into the natural highlight areas to retrieve the original tone. We can use the base colours because the previous filter step should have darkened everything. Brighter highlights are then achieved by adding a little 955 Flat Flesh to the Black Grey and Russian Uniform, with 986 Deck Tan added to the Stone Grey to produce lighter versions of all three base colours.

And that is it. With any luck this has made a little sense, believe me it is far easier to do than to describe but hopefully I have broken down what appears to be a complicated pattern into a relatively easy way of painting it. This shading and highlighting technique does take some practice but also hopefully shows that that any camo pattern can be tackled with a little thought.

 

GROUNDWORK

Bit of a cliché but it really had to be jungle plants, didn’t it? This is one of the reasons that this project stalled for quite a while, I just didn’t want to tackle the plants. I could have gone with the open grassland option but where is the fun it that.

The plants I’ve used here are mainly laser cut paper plants from the jungle plant ranges of both Fredericus Rex and Model Scene, both of which produce some excellent packs of foliage. Preparation couldn’t be simpler; you just cut them from their paper fret and paint them, voila !

Obviously there is a little more to it than that, I must have spent literally days experimenting with different layouts and configurations before I finally settled on the placement of the plants I was going to use. Once happy with the placement I painted the paper plants with various greens from the Vallejo Model Air range, picking out the leaf veins in a lighter tone before giving them a coat of satin varnish from above to impart a slight sheen.

For the groundwork I built up a slightly inclined base from Magic Sculpt textured with a stone and painted it dark brown

Once dry I added a generous layer of diluted white glue and proceeded to cover this with all manner of organic matter. I used dried herbs, roots from the garden, dried teabag contents and anything else that looked suitably decayed. Again, I blended this all in with more diluted white glue and left it to dry for a day or two.

Various oil washes added some much needed depth to the ground cover and I picked out some of the larger roots in lighter green and earth tones to add some relief.

Once everything had fully dried I drilled a series of holes to mount both the figure and the vegetation, fixing it all in place with cyano glue and adding a few extra pieces here and there to blend everything in.

BAMBOO

As you can see from the WIP pictures, I originally wanted to add some large bamboo to the scene to bring the height up at the rear.

I finally relegated this idea to another project but thought it would be interesting to show you how I made these. BTW Please wear eye protection for this bit, you WILL break some and they WILL fly around the room like little javelins if you aren’t careful.

Firstly a wooden cocktail stick is mounted in your motor tool of choice and started spinning at the slowest setting like a makeshift lathe.

As you can see from the photo, I found it useful to steady the end with a finger to stop it wobbling too much. Then after marking out the “knuckles” with a pencil I used a folded piece of coarse sandpaper to sand the indented shape between the knuckles.

The joints themselves are scribed in with the back of a knife (paying particular attention to the rotation direction !!).

Obviously if you need longer sections you can cut them at the knuckles and join two or more lengths together. Simple, eh?. And that is pretty much all there is to it. Don’t forget that whilst growing most bamboo species are green, not light brown like your garden canes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To be historically accurate it is very unusual to see Special Forces on a mission in Vietnam without some kind of face paint – indeed the enemy called these guys “the men with green faces”. Not to mention his sleeves are rolled up which too would have been unusual. I did originally think about the face camo, going so far as to paint a spare head to see how it would look, but then decided against it. One for another time and another camo pattern.

I also fully recognise this guy should be a lot grubbier if he has just spent some time in the jungle and if he is indeed running to “Head for the Huey” that is coming to pick him and his team up.  I’ll put that down to my own artistic licence and what is pleasing to my eye. Let’s just say instead of him heading to the Huey, let’s imagine it has just dropped his team off and he is heading into the boonies from the Huey, looking back tentatively. That’s my story, anyway.

CREDITS

I am forever grateful to Vladimir Demchenko for supplying the wonderful Bravo6 items used on this figure; these and other items are available from http://bravo6.diorama.ru/