Help Painting Camouflage Shapes

[ErikB]

Anyone have a good technique for painting camouflage shapes on uniforms? 

Specifically, rules such as "no spots bigger than the hand of the model" and other such ideas?

I'm having a hard time getting my "spots" right on some Hasslefree Alien Hunters.  I'm going for a Wuestentarn look, so khaki with green and brown spots, but these spots are coming out either too round or too regularly shaped.  When I go back over with the basecolor khaki to try to re-shape the spots it helps but there must be a better way to do this.

Any advice?

Thanks.

[6milPhil]

A photo might help... despite your solid description I always find it hard to talk about imagery without images... 

[Thargor]

I'm sure there must be plenty of images of cam schemes on t'interweb for you to look through.

When I did some desert cam for some GW Imperial Guard many aeons ago I did a base of a brownish khaki, then almost horizontal thin patches in a much lighter colour, then a smaller dark stripe in the middle of the light patch.  Not exactly disruptive pattern, but looked okay on the table.  It was so long ago I don't have any pics of them, or the figures anymore.

[Alfrik]

Your smallest brush is your friend, then place the figure down in some of your typical terrain vegitation, look at him from 3 feet or more, if hes harder to see from your camo work, its good, well thats my rule. Good camo paint makes details hard to see, which is the point after all.

[ErikB]

The challenge comes from 'scaling' the camo shapes.  That requires some simplification and getting that right is the source of my frustration.

[Major_Gilbear]

...Sometimes the Evil Empire has surprisingly useful step-by-step tutorials for these things - afterall, their painters are very good even if you don't like the imagery or models. I found one for painting desert-style camo here for example.

[ErikB]

Here are some examples of what I'm doing.  There are two patterns I am going for, a Wustentarn (or Danish Desert) on the fabric and a similar look to what the actual Aliens guys wore for the helmet and body armor.

I've got the colors and the densities I'm looking for but I just cannot get the shapes to be how I want them to be.  Anyone have some ideas (other than "practice" which I have been doing and only seem to be re-creating the same mistakes).

Thanks heaps for your comments and criticism.

[Commander Vyper]

Dwartist does some very nice camo and always puts a few how to's into the mix, do a search for one of his threads, you won't be dissapointed.

The Commander

[Major_Gilbear]

From what I can see, you're painting the brown splotches onto the green background, and then going around them with a thin line of bone... You would get neater and smaller results if you painted the bone onto the green first, and then 'filled' in with the brown, leaving a bone margin as you go.

I'm not sure what's wrong (or what you don't like) about the desert camo part though - it looks reasonably faithful to the source to me.

One thing I am curious about though, is why you're doing desert camo for the 'soft' parts and temperate camo for the armoured parts? The two schemes just clash with each other and look messy.

The thing to remember with camo is that it is designed to hide and break up the outline of an object or soldier. When we paint models, the whole point of shading and highlighting them is to make the model stand out more. Therefore, when painting camo on a model, it is better to give the impression of a camo scheme rather than trying to paint an actual 'proper' camo pattern.

So in your case I'd stick to plain beige/khaki fatigues and just keep the body armour camouflage-patterned. Or the reverse; camo pattern fatigues and plain body armour. The contrast between the two areas will look better and define the model nicely on the tabletop, whilst still looking plausible and practical.

[ErikB]

Good points, Major.

I was going for a sort-of imitation of the early Gulf War look with the green bodyarmour and tan fabric.  The Colonial Marines from Aliens also have this dual-clashing-camo pattern.  I was hoping to pull that off and make it look artistically pleasing.

You may be right, though - no camo on the armor, just leave it green and do some highlighting and shadowing.

Perhaps some pattern on the helmet.  While it clashes, it is what we're used to seeing from the earlier days of the Iraq and Afghan wars. 

I am discovering (the hard way) how difficult it is to "grok" the camo and scale it down into an artistic representation.  Trying to make it too accurate ruins the artistic effect in that, at 28mm scale, it looks just like a big blob of muck.

And abstracting it into over-simplification makes a different artistic statement.  This is hard.  Heck, I'm a bar-bouncer-turned-computer engineer, not a French Impressionist.  Even figuring out how to express in words the idea I'm after is its own challenge, never mind trying to actually implement it!

[6milPhil]

I think you're verging on wandering into paranoid artistic self-criticism myself... I think they look just fine.

[Alfrik]

Sci camo would evolv from current patterns, unless your trying to do current styles. Todays current is still evolving, as seen over the past 30 years to the current computer generated "spatter" pattern.

[Michi]

Anyone have a good technique for painting camouflage shapes on uniforms? 

Specifically, rules such as "no spots bigger than the hand of the model" and other such ideas?

I'm having a hard time getting my "spots" right on some Hasslefree Alien Hunters.  I'm going for a Wuestentarn look, so khaki with green and brown spots, but these spots are coming out either too round or too regularly shaped.  When I go back over with the basecolor khaki to try to re-shape the spots it helps but there must be a better way to do this.

Any advice?

Thanks.

Choose a basic colour. Choose additional colours for the patches to paint on that. Add spots of the basecolour to any of the patches and spots of the additional colours to the base colour and spots of the additional colours to the additional coloured patches. Understood? View image for reference: