In 1939 Colin found secure employment with the Air Ministry before being transferred to the Ministry of Home Security. Looking back on that period in 1990, Colin commented “they knew the war was going to happen and they knew that they were going to need to camouflage factories and power stations and that the best people to do this were artists.” Colin Moss: Life Observed
All the camoufleurs working at Leamington Spa were artists, architects, sculptors, set designers and so on. The directorate represented the largest concentration of artists in the country at the time. Many of the camoufleurs went on to have successful post-war careers in the creative arts. People such as Eric Schilsky, Edward Seago, Cosmo Clarke, Richard Guyatt and Christopher Ironside.
A portrait of Eric Schilsky by Colin Moss (1941)
Disruptive patterns were at the heart of the camoufleur’s work. Painted onto buildings, to break up forms and outlines, disruptive patterns made objects more difficult to locate and detect, even against a shifting background (ie when looking down from a plane).
The ideal paint substances that were used were products derived from oil installation. The patterns consisted of a mixture of dark and light colours being painted next to each other to break up the object. Also, at power stations like Stonebridge (where Colin’s cooling tower painting was done), the fuel was changed to produce darker smoke that would blend with its surroundings.
Stonebridge Park Power Station – on the right is the cooling tower, bottom left is the rail yard and top left is a contemporary photo of the whole station (1941)
The brushes the painters used were made out of rope strands that were bound together by scrap tin to allow the painter to be able to cover a large area with one stroke. There was an emphasis on practicality rather than finesse and not wasting materials; hence the use of scrap tin.
A camouflage scheme in progress (1943), Colin Moss
Ground patterning was applied first and then representations of buildings in an overall disruptive pattern of dark and light shapes that masked the entire area. The simple equipment allowed painters to work quickly, often able to cover 110 square metres a day. In addition to the paint effects, scrim was used on many camouflage schemes. Scrim is a strong and coarse hessian based fabric. Colin used scrim containing different colours to cover buildings to change the building’s appearance.
Textured roofs with scrim (1943), Colin Moss
Scrim was also used to tape windows to protect damage to the inside of houses from bomb blasts and on artillery emplacements to make the battery look like natural foliage from the air. Scrim was cheap to manufacture and this was why it was so widely used. Colin’s painting of textured roofs shows scrim being used on buildings.
To see more of Colin’s war time water colours and paintings held by the Imperial War Museum, click on the link
