Test-painting Perry's British Desert Rats

I've been meaning to try and get some paint on the very nice Perry Miniatures British figures I bought and reviewed a while ago. I'm no expert on the desert but I had a bunch of paints from the Coat d'Arms British paint set that looked like they could be useful, namely Desert Yellow, Pale Sand, British Khaki and Faded Khaki.

Have at'em boys!!!

Apologies for the slightly fuzzy pictures, they were shot during breakfast today using my mobile phone against a green paper nicked from my kids' box of drawing supplies.

The section's sergeant leads the assault.

Going by the illustration on the back of the box I used Desert Yellow for the trousers and helmets, and Pale Sand for the shirts and leggings. It's slightly lighter and not so yellow so I hope the difference will show after shading.

Come back! You're going the wrong way!!!

Webbings are always a conundrum to me. I started with Faded Khaki which is sort of a grey-ish khaki green but I thought it was too dark. I used British Khaki on the stockings and handkerchiefs some figures has around their neck. Then I swapped so the stockings were painted Faded Khaki and the webbings British Khaki instead. In the picture above the sergeant has British Khaki webbings in comparison with the other two figures' Faded Khaki.

There he is, Tom, get him!

Rifle Stocks were painted Vallejo Saddle Brown while boots, water bottles and rifle slings were painted Dark Leather from CdA. I then experimented a bit and gave one guy a Saddle Brown water bottle, while I used Vallejo Yellow Olive on the sergeants handkerchief  and a rifleman's helmet.

Note the difference in webbing colour.

These are all destined for the Dip -- I use Army Painter's dip for some projects as I think it gives a good result in very little time and I'm very bad at shading light colours like desert uniforms. I painted the first figure before realising I should undercoat them with white if I'm going to use the dip method, but he didn't turn out that dark We will see how they turn out after the dip.

Note the different helmets, some with camo nets, some without.

I really like these figures, they were a joy to build so I hope the dip method will work on them. A funny thing is that I picked out five figures by random from all the box -- I wanted a rifle team with a sergeant wielding a tommy gun -- and out of 21 figures made from nine different bodies, I managed to pick two pairs of figures made from identical bodies. Yet it's hard to see since the different arms and helmets make the figures sufficiently unique. A testament to the Perrys' great skill.

P.S. Don't forget my giveaway. There's still time to enter.