Alpine Sniper Part III

The minimized MARPAT was covered by a solid few layers of pastels from CMK, WarPig and MIG pigments; all of which were sandy in tone. I applied them liberally in the usual weathering areas such as pant legs, knees, sections of the plate carrier that would become grimy when set down in country. The boots and knee pads were painted in a unique pair of colours under coated to have a slight Vermin brown twinge to them, the highlights were applied using a medium grey and Iraqi Sand. The divergence between the two pieces of gear came when the boots reached their appropriate shade, the highlights continued past that for the guards. I have seen various kinds of pads worn by army and marine units in various theatres over the past decade. I considered using the outdated “woodland” backing with a dark grey plate. This was out of character considering I wanted this particular Marine to be operating in Operation Moshtarak or around that time period; a simpler coyote/khaki brown pad and accompanying plate. This seemingly superfluous decision went hand in hand with the decision to keep the Interceptor Plate Carrier a similar brown and his various privately purchased MOLLE fittings a gunship green in order to provide solid, Marine-like uniformity and a bit of contemporary contrast. The Barrett .50cal was given a tiger stripe pattern in order to illustrate spray painted Duracoat done in country. I looked through various sources and noted the different Marine Designated Marksman Rifles in arid camo. There were a few different styles, whole coating, whole coating with small squiggles in dark brown and the slightly more characterful tiger pattern. I thought that the tiger pattern would be a good choice as it would keep the rather large weapon from looking like a rotting piece of wood rather than a solid piece of steel. The pattern would I assumed be enough to obscure the length of the barrel and the general shape of the shooter/weapon at a distance. The flesh was a simple layering exercise. That being said I wanted to have the shooter sporting a 5am shadow. This was achieved by applying small vertical ticks to the concerned area with a thinned WarPigs faded Panzer grey. This leave his face looking sooty and once the pastels set I applied a thinned wash of darker flesh tone. Hical, James