I've been using an peculiar painting technique for Soviet Russian and German 15mm and 20mm WWII figures for a couple of years now, successfully enough that I've painted over 1,000 figures for other people and still built up a personal collection of a couple battalions for each side on the Eastern Front. The primary advantages of the technique, for me at least, are that the figures both look good and they don't take long: as little as 6 minutes average painting time per 15mm figure. Up until recently, I have not expanded the technique to United States troops, but in response to a steady set of requests, and the acquisition of some 15mm US infantry figures, I sat down and figured out how to paint US troops for Northwestern Europe using a combination of paint and ink washes.

One of the problems of painting up US troops for the European Theater is that the US Army had such a wide variety of uniforms it could wear, all more or less authorized for all troops. The basic uniform consisted of wool ('OG') pants and shirt, which could be worn alone or under Field Pants and shirt or in various combinations with a field jacket. The field jacket, shirt, and pants were a different material and lighter shade of "Drab" than the wool items, and the canvas belting and field gear hung on the uniform could weather at a different rate and to a different shade altogether.

In the field in the same unit you could easily find troops in several different combinations of wool and cotton clothing in a wide variety of shades of "olive/green drab". All of this is in sharp contrast to German or Russian troops which, at least in ordinary "line" units, are all in roughly the same uniform, at least! Here then is how to paint US troops to good wargames quality by spending less than 10 minutes per figure. Start with a white undercoat or primer. I know most folks (myself included for earlier troops) are using a black undercoat these days, but this technique uses ink washes to get the shading effects, and it works best over lighter shades of paint.

Paint the basic undercoat colors. These are as follows:

Light Flesh. I use the cheapo buck-a-bottle acrylics from the craft stores, since all I need a basic light flesh color over all the hands, face, arms, and other exposed skin.

Medium Brown over areas of wool pants or shirts, boots, weapons' wooden stocks, brown hair, etc. Over the "wool cloth" areas I like to dip the brush in water a lot, to get a "wash effect" – the inks will darken it considerably.

Light Green or Gray-Green over areas of "web gear, field jackets or pants. There are several shades of Floquil Polly Scale camouflage colors that are labeled "Soviet Green" or "International Gray-Green" that are suitable. Make sure you don't get a lime or olive shade, since these cotton fabrics faded to a grayish white in the end – very little yellowing in the "drab green" hues.

For contrast, leave the leggings white, or give them a very light wash of the gray-green.

Helmets are a medium green – if you're in a hurry, you could even use the same light green or gray-green as on the rest of the uniform, but most of the helmets remained a somewhat darker shade than the cloth, and the variety looks better.

Inks

Now for the inks. I use Rowney's Acrylic Inks from the University Bookstore's art department by the University of Washington, but any commercial brand of "brilliant water colors" or acrylic inks will work: PH Martin's and Windsor & Newton both make lines of similar colors. The ink washes I use for US troops are:

Burnt Umber - a reddish-brown, over all the areas of flesh. I put this on nearly full-strength, but if your troops have been out of the sun you could thin it out some.

Sepia – a very dark black-brown shade, over virtually everything else on the figure. I thin it out about 1:1 with clean water for most of the uniform and belting, full strength over wood, boots, or hair. Here we're taking advantage of a Basic Color Fact: brown over almost any shade of green makes some shade of Drab.

Now take a bottle of clear acrylic flat and add several drops of black to it. Shake well. Cleaning your brush often, paint this over the figure, being careful to clean your brush before moving from flesh to uniform or boot or other differing colored areas. The clear coat will do three things. First, it pulls the ink off the highlights of the figure, giving an almost automatic shading by lightening those areas. Second, it fixes the ink, which otherwise can take days or a week to dry and will bleed through other colors during all that time. Finally, the black added to the clear coat will settle into the creases and folds and increase the contrast and shading effect even more (I'm indebted to Jim Purky of the Seven Year's War Association for the black/clear coat technique)

After the clearcoat is thoroughly dry, paint the metal parts of the weaponry. I use Gun Metal enamels, a dark blue-black, with some Steel or Aluminum shade drybrushed over for highlighting.

If you have the hand for it, US unit insignia were worn on the left shoulder of jackets and overcoats, and most were pretty colorful – the dulled camouflage types didn't come into use until the Vietnam War. This is one place you can add a spot of color legitimately, although you'll need a pretty steady hand and a fine brush to do it in 15mm! Some of the easiest divisional patches were:

1st Infantry Division (Omaha Beach, Huertgen Forest, and the Bulge) "The Big Red One": a dark olive rectangle, bottom edge pointed with a red 'one' in the middle
3rd Infantry Division (Italy, Lorraine): a square with diagonal dark blue and white stripes
9th Infantry Division (Normandy, the Bulge): a red lozenge
28th Infantry Division ( Huertgen Forest, Bulge) "The Bloody Bucket": a red keystone
29th Infantry Division (Omaha Beach): a circle with a gray and blue "yin-yang" symbol filling it.

And, as everyone who saw "Saving Private Ryan" should know by now, the Ranger symbol was a medium blue lozenge oriented sideways, outlined in yellow with the word "rangers" in yellow on it: the lettering doubtless wouldn't show up in 15mm, but the blue lozenge, at least, could be added on the left shoulder. Unfortunately, while colorful, both the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisional patches are fairly intricate: A double 'A' in white on a blue circle on a red square for the "All American" 82nd, and a white, black, red and gold eagle head on a black shield for the "Screaming Eagle" 101st, both with "airborne" in yellow on a blue or black scroll across the top – neither really possible without a microscope, even in 20mm!

Other extra touches: in the European Theater officers were supposed to mark their helmets with a vertical white stripe on the back, sergeants with a horizontal white stripe. While most officer's insignia is very small and was kept subdued or missing and not very easy to see (or paint!) on smaller figures, sergeant's stripes were dull yellow-ochre outlined in black and, with care, can be painted on the sleeves of 15mm figures.

And there you have it. Except for the special touches, like divisional patches and sergeant's insignia, the basic uniforms and be painted or inkwashed on a figure pretty quickly. Doing 20-30 figures at a time on painting sticks, you should be able to average less than 10 minutes' total painting time per figure and have some pretty good-looking figures when you're done.