Despite being a smaller member of the Axis in World War II, the kingdom of Hungary is nonetheless a popular force on the tabletop; but how do you paint them? Today MommaNegan will show you her way of painting Hungarian miniatures, specifically Hungarians in summer dress, Hungarians in winter uniform, and the Hungarian paratrooper in their snazzy camouflage ponchos.
Assuming you have painting recipes for rifles, leather and metal details, I’ve identified five recipes that are key to painting your Hungarian miniatures: summer dress, winter coat, camouflage poncho, pants and helmet. You will be able to use the recipe for the pants on almost every miniature since it was worn under the camouflage ponchos of paratroopers as well; similarly, you can find that camouflage poncho and the winter coat in the gear of soldiers in summer dress.
Helmet
Before we begin I want to direct your attention to the ‘APH’ in front of some of the paints; it is short for ‘Army Painter Historicals’. These are the new exclusive paints Army Painter put out a bit ago for specific historical painting usage. Whenever you see the APH you know it is a paint from one of those sets.
When you’re ready to start the painting, give the helmet an all over basecoat of three parts: Dark Olive mixed with one part Black (whichever brand you like to use). The next step will be to define the mid tones; you want to mix Dark Olive in a one-to-one ratio with Medium Drab and apply it to the little bent parts of the helmet and the dome. Be sure to leave out a ring of the basecoat to imply recess shadows. After that, take pure Medium Drab and layer it towards the edges of the helmet’s bent parts and in a circle around the dome. To finish off do some strong edge highlights around the helmet and around the aforementioned ring on the dome.
Pants
The pants are pretty much the same across the board, and will find use on almost any miniature. We begin by basecoating them with a one-to-one mix of Dark Battle Dress and a Black of your choice. The next step can be done with any kind of black shade; I happened to have the Army Painter one on hand, so that is what I used. Then we take the basecoat mix and layer it all over the pants, making sure to leave out the deep folds. To finish of the pants we take pure Dark Battle Dress and highlight the tops of folds aiming for those that face the sky. Here you can also take a small brush and add some scratches near the edges to imply wear and tear.
Summer Dress
The Summer Dress is fairly similar in tone to Soviet uniforms, but has a slightly browner tone to it; we take Burnt Umber as our basecoat and shade it with Nuln Oil or whichever black shade you have on hand. After the shade dried, we apply a one-to-one mix of Burnt Umber with English Uniform, leaving out only the deepest recesses. The final highlight, English Uniform, can be applied just as that, a highlight; but if you want a smoother finish, you can glaze it towards the sky facing edges in multiple layers until you have a nice gradient and then do a more solid highlight across all edges.
Winter Coat
The Winter Coat has a fascinating gradient from a rich deep green to a desaturated olive green which will maybe go against the painting conventions you are used to, but trust the process and it will turn out nicely. Basecoat the coat with a mix of one part Black to three parts Luftwaffe Camo Green, then layer a one-to-one mix of Luftwaffe Camo Green and Camo Olive Green all over, leaving out the deepest recesses.
Now we switch to the desaturated olive green with Camo Olive Green, which we apply towards the edges leaving a bit of the previous mix showing. A small tip when painting ankle long coats: one way to emphasize the motion underneath is to highlight towards the area where the knee is pushing against the fabric, leaving the underside darker to imply shadows. As our final highlight we mix two parts of the Camo Olive Green with one part Middlestone and apply this as an edge highlight and use it for scratches and fabric textures.
Camouflage
When painting camouflage the first thing you want to do is get an example of what the fabric looked like when laid out flat. There are plenty of examples if you use an internet search for the camouflage in question (or check out a sweet book from the library – editor).
The Hungarian Camouflage M1938 is fairly similar to the Italian Telo Mimetico camouflage so I will orient myself on that both in colour and application of the blotches. As was pointed out to me by Tekkame Ando on Bluesky, the green blotches seem to be the base color. I sadly already painted my miniatures by the time I learned that, so the examples had the blotches painted in the wrong order.
To start, we basecoat the entire poncho with Webbing Green, then apply a highlight layer of British Camo Green, leaving out the recesses such as folds. If you feel fancy you can attempt some glazing to create a highlight gradient. Next up are the brown blotches, you want to apply these in wavy rounded shapes, try avoiding sharp points. We use Hull Red to basecoat the blotches, then apply a one-to-one mix of Hull Red and Orange brown to the inner parts of the brown blotches making sure to leave out folds and painting the colour stronger towards the raised details.
Last step is the trickiest in my opinion: a handful of bright blotch snakes. You can probably tell I struggled with these, but they follow the same principle as the brown blotches, just try and avoid forks and keep them thinner. I used Tan Yellow and highlighted it with Tan Yellow mixed with Iraqi Sand. In retrospect it is a bit too yellowish so you could alternatively use a paler sand paint. Now some finishing touches include grabbing a black brown, watering it down heavily and glazing it into the deepest recesses to invoke more shadow, you want to do this last so the shadow is consistent across all three camo blotches.
And that is it. With these five recipes you should be able to paint up your Hungarian forces for the tabletop. Thank you for reading all the way to the end, I hope you enjoyed this painting guide, stay tuned for more painting guides from the Eastern Front!
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