Painting Camo

[plastichero]

Hi Folks

I am hoping someone can assist me in the fine techniques of painting camouflage. I am looking to do this for my Conquest once he is released. If anyone can give me some pointers or even link on seeing what people have done that would be great. Cheers.

T.

[Peg leg Pete]

depends on the type of camo you want to do. i've done my jaks in a very simple forest camo pattern to try to represent the fact that, for my own fluff, camo techniques are still in their infancy. i have painted other figs for my 40k witch hunter force in a pattern i've seen described as "chocolate chip." that takes a lot longer to do, but it looks pretty good when done. sadly, i don't have any pics of my GW stuff, and the pics i DO have of my jaks are pretty low quality. i've started to re-photograph some of my army, but haven't gotten all the way done yet. anyway, here's my battle group with some greylords thrown in:

[joelker41]

Just posting to subscribe....curious about this as well.

I am considering blue camo for my Ret repainting.

[PG_Ghool]

For the record, painting camouflage is painful. It usually takes a long time, and in the end doesn't ever really look that good, unless you're a super-hero historical painting guru.

The purpose of it is to break up the outline of an object, making it harder to spot the hard-edged lines and shapes.
When painting a miniature like this, it can make it difficult to see on the table, and forgetting about your pieces while playing is never a good idea.

I personally hate it, and it's a much better idea to simply use solid colours. Highlighting and shading multiple colours on the same surface is nigh-impossible, and most of the time you have to leave the surfaces devoid of shading or highlighting.

PP miniatures are already pretty busy, and chock-full of detail. When painting a camo design, keep in mind that you're going to be making an already busy model even busier.

[Exemplar's_Gaze]

They actually did some Retribution up in camo in the latest No Quarter. It looked REALLY cool.

[PG_Ghool]

They actually did some Retribution up in camo in the latest No Quarter. It looked REALLY cool.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. It's in NQ#42, and is a pretty easy technique using sponge painting, and simple lines.

[joelker41]

Yes Ghool those models look terrible...I wouldn't play them
..send them to me for proper disposal.

[plastichero]

Hey Ghool

Thank you for chiming in here. I am thinking of a dark camo motif mainly using greys, blacks and some blue. I was thinking of starting off with my dark greys and going from there. I did look at the NQ and will be reviewing it again. Outside of it taking long to so do you have any other pointers? Thanks for any assistance.

T.

[Autumn Stone]

Painting camo for minis is hard because all the cheats and illusions that we use to make a mini look like a real thing made small work contra to the way camo works.

We try to increase contrast - light to dark on curved planes, in linear reflections with metallics, and contrasting colours and colour depth between different parts of the whole composition.

Plus as Ghool points out there is the whole busy- ness issue.

Trick is that we need a new set of cheats and illusions to allow complex patterns to work in miniature. We actually see this a bit with the various forms of tartan you see in trolls in this forum. We aren't painting a true tartan in miniature, we are using a trick to fool the eye into thinking it's seeing a true tartan. We need to try similar tricks to make camo work.

The first of these tricks is to not make the camo pattern actually camouflage the model. Sounds bizarre, but the last thing you want to do is hide your mini. You want a not-to-busy pattern that the eye thinks is camo, but still contrasts well with other components of your mini. These other components need to really really draw the eye to them, as the camo will end up appearing a uniform camo patern in the overalls image of the mini.

So...

For the camo patern, keep it to just the large flat areas. Choose only three or so colours that are fairly close to each other. Eg for forest camo, a beige, a dull green and a lighter dull green. For snow camo, a blue grey, a light blue grey and a white (or almost white). For bloodstone march, a beige, a brown and a rust. Etc. for the pattern, I really like the NQ method. Base coat and shade, apply the second colour with a sponge, then break up the shape with some pattern from the third colour.

For the rest of the model, you need to really draw the eye. Glowy bits, metals, pistons and gears, smoke stacks, gems, etc need to be rich colours that contrast strongly with the camo.

Looking at Ghool's myrmidon, from the front the mini gets a bit lost in its camo. The yellow swirls and metals of hand and face do help draw the eye, but (I can't believe I'm suggesting a change to something Ghool painted) I'd push them even harder. I'd make the gems go from pure white to brighter yells, add in glow to the gems and the arc nodes, and add glowy eyes to the face plate. Even use chrome NMM instead of steels for the metals.

From the back, the metal blades really draw the eye due to the colour contrast and the strong shading he's done on it.

The same can be seen in the rangers. The camo cloaks is just counterpoint to the leathers and metals he's done, and the eye is drawn to these features that brings the whole mini together.

And ... I appear to have accidentally written an essay. Oops.

Good luck. Post some pics when done

Cheers
A.S.

[flameberge]

I've done a good deal of historical camo and can give you a few pointers on execution. I've never invented a camo pattern so I don't have experience with that but I would suggest no more than 2-3 colors and would look at some historical examples for inspiration. Judging from your color choices some WW2 Naval camo patterns would be the first place I'd look as many of them had patterns using those colors and have some pretty simple patterns that should be easy to replicate. On to execution, base coat the model in your primary color and shade/highlight it like you normally would. If your airbrushing, basecoat the model in a shade color and then spray the large panels with your basecoat focusing on the center of the plates, then do the same with a highlight color covering a smaller area but again focusing on the center of the plates. Now on to the additional colors. If your pattern has a soft edge to it, thin your paint to about 1:3 thinner to paint and spray the outer edges of the pattern to give it that soft edge and then just fill in the pattern. If your brush painting you have to thin your paint a lot and kind of feather the edges of the pattern out to get a soft edge. If your doing a hard edged pattern and are airbrushing you'll need to use tape or a liquid mask to get the hard edges. Now that you have your pattern done, to help make the details of the miniature stand out (as these tend to get blurred because of the camo) use weathering pigments or a simple drybrush of something like a light khaki or beige to go over all the edges and details of the model. This will help them stick out. Finally you can paint a glaze of a shadow color suitable to your pattern and paint the glaze into the cracks and crevices to accentuate the details.

[Nanoha]

And ... I appear to have accidentally written an essay. Oops.

You made good points though. I definitely agree you need high contrast (speaking from painting camo on Battletech minis that are fairly small) to make sure it's seen. And you need some areas of solid color that's not the camo to break it up

I think the other point is when doing the camo don't make the dots/splotches/lines of the camo colors too small. Yeah if it were real life you wouldn't paint huge tablecloth size swaths of color to camouflage more things, but on a mini if your camo is say millions of tiny dots it'll break up the lines of the mini even more and make it harder for the viewer to piece together the details of what they're looking at

[flameberge]

Camo on an infantry model is done a bit differently and can be done in a couple ways but the simplest way is to start by priming the model black. Then lightly drybrush the uniform white. Now drybrush the model your main camo color over the white drybrush a little more heavily than the white drybrush. This will help form your first level of shade and highlight. Now wash the uniform with a mix of about 1:4 black to basecoat. This will help reduce the graininess of the drybrushing. Now paint on your pattern. Keep the brighter colors in your pattern out of the deeper recesses of the of the folds in the cloth and try and put brighter colors toward the high spots. Its a bit of artistic license but pretty important. Not to knock Ghool's amazing painting but if you look at the cloak of his ranger having the bright green of the pattern in the deep folds of the cloak just doesn't look quite right even though its appropriate to the pattern. Once the pattern is complete apply a sepia ink to the folds of the cloth to shade and add definition to the camo. Then take a black& sepia mix and outline the seams and details of the uniform. Finally you can mix in some flesh color in with the base colors to create highlight colors. Thin down the highlights quite a bit, and apply to the high spots of the uniform.

[plastichero]

Hi Folks

So here is my first attempt at camo for my Shocktroopers:



Here is a close up of the first attempt. I have not gone full camo yet. I am mainly looking for some feedback as to what I have just currently done.




The Grey is a weird one and comes out more blue tone than grey itself. So please let me know what you folks think and please let me know if I am on the right track. Thanks.

T.

[Nanoha]

So here is my first attempt at camo for my Shocktroopers:

Here is a close up of the first attempt. I have not gone full camo yet.

You've got good colors, if you add a few more white areas to make it more of a pattern and less random markings you'll have a great paint scheme

[kommander_redfinger]

Some really good advice in this thread. Personally I would not put any camo on the Conquest, having assembled 2, painted 1 and about to start painting the second one the Conquest is a VERY busy model. There are a lot of angles, details and individual parts that can be treated almost as a model themselves. I think the approach you are taking with your MOW's is good, less is more. But on the Conquest I would just stick with your base colors and some simple accents.

Ashton

[PG_Sauklaue]

I did a camouflage tutorial for the german "page5" forum, here is a quick translation:

German winter camouflage - Quick & Dirty

Prime the minis black.



Paint on the base color of the camo, here light grey with an airbrush.



Here comes the fun: Rip a blister foam into pieces and choose one...



and dip it into another color of the camo, here: White

[PG_Sauklaue]

Dab the piece of foam wild on the mini. Optional: Giggle maniacally.



Repeat with the next camo-color. Here: Black. Don't forget to giggle.



Fun is over, paint the metallics and leather parts.



Wash with thinned down black.

[PG_Sauklaue]

Some rust with thinned down brown and orange,



and details like the eyes.



Paint the base, add some static gras and play around with pigments. Done!

[Grimwolf]

@Sauk - Simple yet effective... I like it! Good post.

[PG_Hollow_Echo]

Holy crap that's cheating right, that's got to be cheating.

[Dacian]

Here is a wip shot of one of my destroyers.

The camo got a hit from a darker wash to mull the tones a bit. When I actually get around to taking new pictures ill show you what it looks like now.

[Exemplar Arn]

just a suggestion dacien but have you looked at Multicam www.multicampattern.com. its a very muted pattern which i hope once your destroyer was washed is what happened to it. Anyway I like it Oh and Sauk I'm so going to have to borrow that method for my trencher commandos and rangers. very nice

[Nanoha]

Here is a wip shot of one of my destroyers.

Would you be open to some criticism? If not just ignore this post.

IMO the color palette of the camo is good - the base brown color, the green, the yellow. But the second brown color you're using for the stripes is too similar to the base color. If you either got rid of it or used a different color (a much darker brown closer to black) it would work.

My second comment is similar to a point I made earlier (and again this is strictly IMO) is the stripes of color are too thin. It's on the verge of breaking up the outline too much. Higher up on the chassis in front of the smoke stacks the stripes appear to be broader and those work. But on the front, particularly the legs it's too thin.

I think it's a good model with well executed painting, but a few slight changes would make it really pop

[Dacian]

just a suggestion dacien but have you looked at Multicam www.multicampattern.com. its a very muted pattern which i hope once your destroyer was washed is what happened to it. Anyway I like it Oh and Sauk I'm so going to have to borrow that method for my trencher commandos and rangers. very nice

Cheers for that, I hadnt seen multicam before, I primarily deal with auscam in my day to day.
Yeah once it was washed it darkened up and tied together much nicer, admittedly even in the pic above the yellowish tone has come out much brighter than in rl.

@sauk thats a very tight looking cam job for minimum effort.looks ace.
@ghool your stuff always looks awesome, I am always inspired by your work.
@plastichero thats a good start on your mow

[Dacian]

Would you be open to some criticism? If not just ignore this post.

IMO the color palette of the camo is good - the base brown color, the green, the yellow. But the second brown color you're using for the stripes is too similar to the base color. If you either got rid of it or used a different color (a much darker brown closer to black) it would work.

My second comment is similar to a point I made earlier (and again this is strictly IMO) is the stripes of color are too thin. It's on the verge of breaking up the outline too much. Higher up on the chassis in front of the smoke stacks the stripes appear to be broader and those work. But on the front, particularly the legs it's too thin.

I think it's a good model with well executed painting, but a few slight changes would make it really pop

Cheers, always open to c&c, otherwise how do you get better?
this was the first of 6 Khador omnijacks I have done in this pattern, the other use a darker brown as you suggested. Looks interesting when they are all standing next to each other
My units etc are not painted in a camo per se, primarily dark green, dark leathers and accent colours, which tie them into the camo scheme.of the jacks.