Here are some early war Germans in their distinctive 'Pickelhaube' helmets and full packs. In planning out this project, I knew I would have to find a way to make the various nations' uniforms distinct from one another while being restricted to a fairly generic grey palette. In looking at black and white photos of the period I found the tonal diferences between the tunic of a French Poilu, a German Landser and a British Tommy quite similar, so I knew that I would need to amplify or mute certain aspects of their uniforms to better differentiate them from one another.
With this in mind I purposefully began with the Belgians as their uniform was the darkest of any in 1914. My thinking was that once I established the greyscale palette for the Belgian's almost black uniform then all the others (German, French and British) would reference from that benchmark.
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