WWI Air Wargaming
in Miniature
Part II

Modeling and Painting the Miniatures

Painting, Markings, and Colors

by Bill Rutherford

Painting

This is not a painting tutorial. Paint your aircraft just as you would any other miniature. Painting your aircraft can be no-frills or it can take as much time as all the rest of the tasks involved in getting your model on the game table combined. Beyond the basic job of getting the right colors on the right parts of the model, there are a couple of things you can do to make your aircraft stand out.

First, consider shading and counter-shading. A wing typically consists of cross-sectional ribs, joined by spars, and covered with fabric. The points at which the fabric lies over the ribs cause fore-aft ridges on the wing. On a dark base color, light highlighting these ribs with a lighter shade of your base color lends a sense of depth to the wing. It's got to be subtle, though, or your wings will look striped. As ever, go to photos for reference. Counter-shading consists of slightly darkening the troughs between the ribs - again being subtle about it. This applies equally to the fuselage - lightly highlighting fuselage stringers and protrusions adds an impression of detail. On a light base color - clear-doped linen, for example (a light tan color), you actually apply the reverse of this technique to get the same effect. Slightly darken the ribs, lightening the sags between the ribs...

This is because clear-doped linen was vaguely translucent; you could actually see the rib edges where they pressed against the fabric as dark outlines. Still again, look at photos! The photo of the clear-doped DeHavilland DH2 pusher appearing elsewhere in this article illustrates this to good effect.

Noted elsewhere, your round wire struts will need a bit of painting attention to look right. If the strut's to be, say, medium gray, paint it that base color. Then, highlight the sides of the strut with a lighter shade of that color. This draws one's attention to the sides of the strut and makes it seem thinner when viewed from the front - the darker color on the leading and trailing edges decrease the attention one focuses on those edges.

Depending on the amount of detail on your airplane, you may want to outline details - panels, control surfaces, etc. - with a darker shade of the base color. Easy does it! Too much contrast, or too thick outlines, will make the whole effect a bit silly. We've all seen miniature troops who suffered from heavy black lines outlining their cross belts and equipment…

Aircraft serial numbers, especially in 1/300th scale, can be represented by a tidy black squiggle in the appropriate location on tail or fuselage side.

Many aircraft had exposed wood surfaces protected with clear varnish or dope. Often, the wood grain was quite apparent. You can simply paint these surfaces a wood color (see chart, below) and get a pleasing effect. You can, however, go a step further and get a really nice effect. Mix a bit of your base wood color with a bit of red brown. You want just enough of a color difference from the base color to be aware of the difference, so, again, easy does it!. Dry brush this color over the base wood color, following the grain. The result will be slightly grainy looking wood. This is much more useful on 1/144 and larger miniatures, but I've seen 1/285th scale Albatrii with plywood fuselages whose appearance was quite improved as a result of this treatment.

Most of the aircraft of the period were basically fabric covered, with wood or metal panels around the engine area. These panels were frequently of a different color than the background - polished or dull metal, or gray or black metal panels, and varnished wood panels really stood out against the doped fabric background. Simply painting the panels in the appropriate colors will ad a lot of perceived detail to your model. Carrying this one step further, outlining the panels with a darker shade of the background color, or perhaps with black or dark gray around metal panels, really makes them stand out. Again, there's a fine line between making a panel stand out and overdoing it.

WW I aircraft engines were filthy, oil-spewing things. Airfields were, at best, grassy fields and at worst, muddy fields. Aircraft were, as a result, dirty. Dry-brushing a bit of mud (I like Polly-S 410069 Dirt color…) onto your wheels and, perhaps, on the undersides of the aircraft, highlights raised detail and makes things look dirty. A thin black wash in the engine area - on the undersides behind the cowling, adds an air of griminess to things.

Once again, look at period photos - they're your best guide to weathering specific aircraft types. Note, though, that many people like WW I aerial gaming not only because the period itself is interesting, but because the aircraft were so interestingly colored and marked. Before weathering a model, consider the toning down effect weathering has on markings - you may decide you don't want to weather!

There's one aspect of aircraft colors that's unique enough to merit mention all by itself. As noted in the Colors part of this article, the Germans, especially later in the war, often covered their flying surfaces, and occasionally their fuselages, with fabric that had factory-applied multicolored lozenge patterns on it. To my knowledge, nobody produces lozenge decals in either 1/285th or 1/144th scale (Please - prove me wrong!). This is tedious. I've painted several 1/300th scale aircraft with lozenge patterns. In this scale, it's mainly a matter of putting dots of paint in a regular pattern on the wing. Look at photos and get an idea of the pattern.

Apply all dots (lozenges) of a single color at one time, starting with the lightest color. Repeat for as many colors as are in the pattern. When you're done, you should have a wing covered with a repeating multicolored pattern. It'll likely not be as neat as you want - at least not on your first few tries - but will, from six inches or more away, capture the effect. I've not painted any 1/144th scale models with lozenge patterns; it's just big enough that the shape of the lozenges begins to be important - simply putting appropriately-colored dots down isn't adequate. I've considered getting a scale plan of the pattern (several manufacturers produce lozenge decal sheets in 1/72nd scale - simply photocopy at 50% reduction) and tracing it onto the wing with a pencil, then painting in the lozenges... I welcome input on this from anybody with a better idea!

The whole issue of strict color accuracy is, especially in these small scales, a bit meaningless. One will want to pay attention to it, but not lose sleep over it. The original colors, as you will see in the Colors section, suffered from lack of consistency due to evolving paint formulations, lack of quality control, and susceptibility to weathering in the sun. The colors noted in the color chart are guides and nothing more. If your colors vary a bit (or in some cases, a lot), you may still be on the money.

To further muddle things, consider the issue of scale color. If you look at, say, a 4 foot square of bright blue at ten yards' distance, you see a bright blue square. If you hold a color swatch of the same bright blue up so it appears to be next to the square, they appear to be the same color. If you look at the same square at 200 yards' distance, it will appear to be toned down and perhaps lighter - almost as if some of the color's gone out of it - when compared to the color swatch in your hand. OK - now consider how far, in scale, you are from your miniature biplane when you look at it.

In all likelihood, if you looked at a real biplane from the equivalent real distance, its colors would appear quite a bit lighter than and toned down when compared to the color swatch you held that was (supposedly) the same color… What's this mean? You may want to cut your colors with a bit of white - to tone them down without graying them out - to give you a scale impression of color. This is essentially the same effect one goes for when one highlights and shades one's miniatures. I think it looks better to tone things down a bit, but it's really a matter of taste - try it on one biplane and see what you think…

Applying Markings

Goblintooth has come to the rescue with their comprehensive range of decals, so a major bane of 1/300th scale WW I air gamers - painting national markings consistently and neatly - is solved. Numbers and letters of various sorts are available, from Goblintooth and others, so that the only things really missing for the small scale air gamer are unit markings. Fortunately, in this scale, hats-in-the-ring, eagles, and such, aren't all that difficult to paint freehand - remember: they're small, and that hides a host of minor mistakes.

1/144th scale models come supplied with basic national markings. Numbers and letters are available from a number of vendors. Unit insignia, however, are not (as far as I know) and must be hand-painted. This can be a bit of a problem because these models are large enough to make errors noticeable, so a steady hand and a lot of practice is required. There are two ways around hand-painting unit markings (at least, directly on the model).

One way is to get yourself some sheets of decal in solid colors - most hobby shops have or can order them from vendors such as SuperScale, etc. For basic geometric markings, cut the markings from the decal sheet in the appropriate colors and apply them to the model. Sometimes a combination of decal and paint is appropriate - a basic shape is cut from decal, but details are filled in with a paintbrush. As long as you let the stuff thoroughly dry before applying, you can paint details on the unapplied decal, wetting and applying the decal, paint and all, at a later time.

Another method of avoiding painting markings directly on the model (perhaps, due to obstructions such as struts, etc., that would interfere with your painting...) is to take a piece of clear decal sheet and to paint the marking in its entirety on the decal. This isn't necessarily quicker than hand-painting markings on the model, but it allows one to paint on a flat surface and makes painting several of a given insignia much easier; you can assembly-line them, gaining uniformity in the process (say you want to do a squadron...). Once you've painted the marking on the decal, coat it with a flat or gloss coating - Testor's, Pactra, and others, make sprays for this - and, after dry, apply your new decal to your miniature just as you would any other.

Painting personal markings on one's scouts and two-seaters is, potentially, the most enjoyable part of the painting process, because it is here that one really personalizes one's models and gives them character!

Aircraft Colors 101

Introduction

The following will provide a basic introduction to how the combatants - Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and the USA - camouflaged and marked their aircraft during WW I. There are several comments common to all the combatants' aircraft, which follow below. As noted in the section on painting your miniatures, color variation is not only OK, it's expected. Changing color formulae, variable quality control, and exposure to the sun all took their toll on the various dopes and varnishes used to finish aircraft.

The color chart at the end of this section provides FS595a equivalents (see bibliography for this reference), as well as the best matches I could find for Polly-S and Polly-Scale paints, to most of the referenced colors. The Floquil-Polly S Color Corp. produces several sets of paint chips of their color lines, including FS595a equivalencies, that were most useful in finding color matches. Their paint line is in transition, moving, I understand, from Polly-S to Polly-Scale. At this point, both can be found in hobby shops – as the latter expands, the former will disappear from the shelves. Most of the FS595a matches came from articles appearing in the various publications in the bibliography that were themselves the result of study of original aircraft fabric patches held in numerous museums. The paint matches came from the aforementioned paint chips and from eyeballed matches from FS595a. I included many that were based on examinations of color plates in Windsock and other sources. It's important to note that, even among the studied fabric swatches, there was considerable color variation due to all of the preceding reasons. I considered asterisking those FS595a matches that were the most tentative, but realized that they all were! Where I couldn't find a match that worked at all, I provide the nearest match I could find, with suggested mixing instructions for a workable match in the notes. Take them as starting points - as guides - not as gospel.

WW I camouflage and markings can - and has - filled books. The following is neither authoritative nor complete. It's only a starting point for the reader/gamer to learn more about how the aircraft that fought the First World War were colored and marked, and to allow the gamer to field (air?) generally properly painted miniatures. I direct you to any of the books in the bibliography (or, indeed, in the bibliographies of either Hostile Aircraft or Red Baron) to deepen your knowledge about this subject.

As regards unit and personal markings, I can't urge you strongly enough to do your own homework. Photographs are everything! Pull out a book on WW I air combat and look at a few of the pictures of the planes. The markings you will see are what gave these planes their character and individuality. In reading about the units and pilots who flew in the war, and in studying their photos, you will not only be able to paint more realistic miniatures - you will have a greater appreciation of what happened and why.

Aircraft finishes were generally one of two types - natural and colored. Natural (clear-doped) finishes involved applying clear preservative dope to fabric surfaces, varnish of one sort or other to wood surfaces, and either clear or pigmented varnish to metal surfaces. You will note several suggested colors for clear-doped linen on the color chart below. This is due to the wide variety of varnishes and dopes used to protect the fabric - some yellowed, some didn't - and the varying colors of the bleached and unbleached linen used to cover flying surfaces. Colored finishes were initially applied as much to protect the underlying fabric from the sun's rays as for camouflage. In the case of the British, at least, there's a fair body of documents tracing the development of their camouflage colors in terms of the degree of protection they offered aircraft fabric. As the war wore on, camouflage finishes became ever more elaborate, culminating in the German lozenge pattern-printed fabrics.

Notes

There seems to have been no consistency in the naming of colors. If I could find a proper name (e.g., PC10 Khaki) for a color, I refer to it by that name. Otherwise, I refer to the colors with simple, plain-English names that a) describe the color and b) appear on the color chart below.

I didn't cite specific references for every comment or statement about aircraft colors. There are so many that this article would quickly have become unreadable had I done so. If you have questions about specific statements, please contact me via The Courier and I'll happily provide you the specific reference. All of the references that I used do, however, appear, in some form or other, in the bibliography.

More WWI Air Wargaming

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #75
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1998 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com