For the last year I’ve had a squad of Vietnam War USMC Recon primed and sitting in my queue. Every time a new project would join them and pass them up I could feel their crayon-craving stares boring into my soul. Eventually I could take no more of their non-verbal harassment and promoted them from my queue to my painting desk.
After some brief investigating I decided to paint them in the ERDL lowland camouflage that was commonly worn by USMC Recon during the Vietnam War. While replicating the complex pattern shown below in detail is beyond my skill level and patience I endeavored to replicate the colors well enough to represent the camouflage patter.
The paints I used are Vallejo’s Black (950), USA Uniform (922), German Cam. Medium Brown (826), Golden Olive (857), and Pale Sand (837).
Photo of ERDL lowland camouflage from Wiki Commons.
Base coat the uniform with a 1:1 mix of USA Uniform and Black.
Highlight with USA Uniform.
Add patches of German Cam. Medium Brown. I aimed to cover between 1/2 and 1/3 of the uniform with irregular brown patches.
Next add smaller patches of a 3:1 mix of Golden Olive and Pale Sand. This was the trickiest color for me to replicate. The Golden Olive alone ended up blending in with the USA Uniform and a 1:1 mix of Holden Olive and Pale Sand resulted in patches that contrasted too much. The 3:1 mix worked well enough but I encourage anyone trying to adapt this recipe for yourself to experiment with different mixes to find the color that works best for you.
Add a few small patches of Black. I found that painting tiny Vs and Ns at different angles helped to add another dimension to the pattern. Finish painting the rest of the model and you’re done. A hopefully passable rendition of USMC ERDL lowland camouflage.
