Painting my Mat-o-War

The original mat colour was darker than I wanted

Painting twenty four square feet of wargaming mat has to be one of the biggest hobby related painting projects I have ever undertaken. As stated a few days ago my Mat-o-War arrived and on the whole I am very pleased with it. However it was a little darker than I would have liked and as various websites suggested painting it I put out a request for advice here on BLMA and over at TMP. The feedback received was very useful and so this weekend I attacked my new wargaming mat with several cans of spray paint!

The method suggested by those in the know, and adopted my me, was relatively simple:

1. Lay the mat out in a well ventilated area (in my case, the Garden)
2. Apply several light dusting's of spray paint in short bursts from about 18 inches range
• Base: Desert Yellow (Humbrol) and  Dark Yellow (Tamiya)
• Secondary: Sand (Humbrol) and  Light Sand (Tamiya)
• Highlight: Ivory (Halfords)
3. Allow to dry for several hours before handling

The aim is not to create any specific features (although you could do that, adding roads of instance), but merely to break up the uniformity of the mats basic colour  By keeping the can at a distance the paint only adheres to the surface of the fabric and doesn't soak all the way through. This means you could paint the other side a different colour if you so wished.

The unpainted mat is on the right and the base painted colour is on the left

Again the unpainted mat is on the right and the final highlighted mat on the left

The above picture doesn't do the finished effect justice because it really does look much better than the unpainted mat. The overall effect is much less uniform, significantly lighter in tone and compliments the basing of my particular models.

British Heavy Tank Squadron and an Infantry Tank Company on my newly painted mat