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Hi guys!

So, *inhales deeply, knowing roughly how nightmarish this is gonna be* I've just primed the two ratlings from Blackstone, and after umming and ahhing about the scheme to go for, suddenly, randomly, and without much consideration of how tough it may or may not be, fell in love with giving them German "Platanenmuster" (I think this is the right term? Kinda late-ish war era dot pattern camo a la http://www.warlordgames.com/painting-waffen-ss-plane-tree-camouflage/ )

I was wondering if anyone had any tips about how to do this (beyond "you're insane, it's hell, don't do it, it's much, much harder than you're imagining"), and any experience of executing it? at of right now, I'm thinking of, after all the layers are done (I might wash the original green base before applying the camo pattern) washing with maybe agrax or athonian camoshade, then maybe a very gentle drybrush of tyrant skull, followed by another wash, to sorta add some definition?

What do ya'll think?

Again, historical wargamers, ww2 nuts, or anyone with any experience of this please, please, PLEASE enlighten me!

Thanks for stopping by! And I'd really appreciate any help ya have!
Your pal, Poser McBogus

I painted my Bolt Action SS in the fall version of that pattern. Not particularly well since my painting skills at the time weren't thrilling, but I can share the lessons I learned.

First off, I did what you're thinking of doing, painting the pattern and then giving it a wash. I don't like the lack of depth camo patterns that are done without shading end up with. I don't think washing at the end is the way to go, though, since it tones down the whole pattern. You'll have your shades but will be lacking the highlights. Depending on your painting style and the non-camo parts of the models, that may end up looking off.

So if you paint with both shaded recesses and highlights, I'd suggest applying any wash somewhere in the middle. If you follow the steps in the article, I'd wash between steps 4 and 5. Do step 4, wash with either brown or green depending on which tint you're looking for, then pick out all the raised areas with the paints you used up until step for. That should give you a nicely shaded base that can be then wrapped up with the remaining colors.

Why do that between steps 4 and 5? The dots in steps 6 and 7 will be so small you won't be able to highlight them in any meaningful way, so there's no reason to apply them more than once in the exact color you want. I'd also argue that dark olive is a muted, dark color that won't meaningfully benefit from either a brown or green wash, whereas tinting black a little in the direction of the other colors used will prevent it from standing out and presenting too stark a contrast.

That's how I'd do it.

Oooh, interesting! You don't have any pics, do you?

What colour would you recommend for the wash, too? As mentioned, between an earthy green, and brown atm.

Also! For trousers! What did you go with? Initially, I was considering pure camo, but after a bit of research, it seems that Plantanenmuster was frequently mixed with more simple feldgrau trousers, and the collar was also feldgrau. Warcrimes and abhorrent ideologies aside, I think it looks quite dapper, though I don't know how well that translates to miniature form. Any thoughts?

Thanks very much for your input!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh! And, any tips for equipment colouration? The two ratlings are lugging quite a lot of gear - I'm toying with making it either plantanenmuster, or maybe feldgrau, but also just leather/sack cloth are options...

Picture time:



That's the last SS Grenadier I painted before I dedicated my time to my Italian army, and the one that came out the best. The model in my opinion suffers from my simplistic approach to Bolt Action models (never mind that they're quite small and it's not easy fitting a camo pattern on them) that was a basecoat, a simple coat of the relevant color and a wash to finish it. It's not a bad tabletop standard especially if you plan on painting a whole army in a camo pattern, but for show the model simply lacks depth. I couldn't tell you anymore how many or which browns I used, but they all got blended together by the wash. That's the reason why I wouldn't advise applying the wash in the end. Dark to light contrast is simply not there on camo patterns because the differently colored spots don't stand out enough.

As far as washes are concerned, if you want to do the summer variant of plane tree. I don't think you can go wrong with either Athonian Camoshade or Agrax Earthshade. On a camo pattern its main purpose is to darken the base layer and provide contrast to the highlight layers. Both washes will do that and the only real difference you should see is in the recesses. Since the camo pattern uses greens and browns, there's really no reason to favor one over the other aside from personal taste. And, full disclosure incoming, green isn't really my color, so if you asked me for recommendations, the answer would always be brown.

I painted his pants in the same simple fashion as anything else for Bolt Action. Codex Grey (the modern equivalent of which is Dawnstone) with a wash of Athonian Camoshade. Like I said, I'm not big on green and never owned many green paints, so that was a good way to get feldgraugrün at the time. No idea what I'd do these days to add highlights without taking the green out of the grey, though. I've not given that any thought.

Any yeah, these camo patterns were never applied to pants (not industrially anyway). Only the late war pea dot pattern got manufactured pants. Plane tree, if I recall, was only used on overshirts (thus you get the grey collar from your normal shirt), jackets and zeltbahn ponchos. So if you want to stick to the historical look, grey pants are the way to go. I like the look myself because it gives the model a little bit of variety. Uniforms, both mono-color and with camo patterns, can look pretty samey.

That said, the Ratlings of course don't wear German uniforms and with the large backpack and the chest plate you may want to consider painting camo pants after all since the shirts don't offer a lot of surface area. There's also nothing to stop you from doing one with camo pants and the other with grey pants.

Leather, be it natural or blackened, works fine for the appropriate bits and I don't think there's anything on the models you want to paint garishly. If you want to stick with drawing from WW2 German colors, consider that not just tanks but Afrikakorps helmets made use of plain ocher. You could paint the little fridge like that, for instance. Or the mine that one of them has. And if you're feeling extra funny, you could paint the bedroll on one of them like a... borrowed rolled up Italian three color camo poncho (that's beige, olive and brown).

Camo is difficult to pull off on miniatures. The very idea of camo is the polar opposite to what you're usually trying to acheive with a miniature, that is, High contrast, shadows, High lights etc. The whole point of camo is to reduce those things to stop you being seen. However, it is possible.

Below are some kriegers I painted a few years ago. I wasnt particularly good at painting then but I feel as though the old fell pattern comes off OK and is recognisable at first glance. I can't really remember how I did the camo. It looks like a brown base, followed by orange, then dappled using a dark brown.

You can see that I achieved a contrast by painting other areas a grey blue. Blue is a complimentary colour to orange so this is quite visually pleasing. (this was accidental. I knew sweet f a about colour theory back then) it also makes up for the lack of contrast on the clothing somewhat.

I'll also say try not to make your patterns too cluttered. You'll have to use less of the disruptive patterns than would realistically be there due to scale, otherwise it will turn into a mess of tones indecipherable to human eyes.

I can relate, color theory is rather important, especially when painting camo. I once tried to paint a splintertarn derivate camo on my guardsmen and the result was horrible. It was when I was just starting with Warhammer and wasn't a good painter, but that is irrelevant now because the main problem was in colors. Green armor, brown poaches and camo pattern on clothes. The miniatures blended with the green gaming table and were hard to distinguish from the distance and even easy to overlook if they weren't in the open. The camo worked just well, but that was counter-productive in this case, as it lacked contrast. Using shades of gray is best if you want to stay neutral. If you have light mini, use dark gray and vice versa, darken with nuln-oil, highlight with white drybrush...

I've seen a couple of miniatures with camo, but they still had some contrast elements on them. Here is a pic from a fellow Dakkanaut. The latter is my own.

Alright gents - thanks very much for the input, I feel somewhat as though I almost know what I'm about to fling myself into...

Followed a Tamiya guide, and I'm pretty much liking what I'm seeing. Thinking if throwing in some black or dark grey, however. Any ww2 camo boffs got any strong opinions? Maybe more dots of the base dark green grey over the top, just to break up the lightness?
I was surprised by how painless this was, however this lil square is very, very lil...

That said, so are my ratlings, right? So it's all good! Right? ...right?

Thanks for dropping by, and I really appreciate any insight y'all may have fer me!

Looks good to me.

First thing I'd suggest is thinking about how that will look on the actual models. The test patterns is on a flat surface and you may want to consider using darker colors in the recesses of the clothes to create depth. You have what, five different colors there? Once you figure in shades and highlights, I don't know if you want to add another color for little spots on top of that.

That said, if you do I'd advise against black. Black dots have a way of standing out against muted colors like brown and olive. I'd only use that if you absolutely want to draw attention to them, which probably goes counter to what kind of effect you want to achieve when painting camouflage.

Grey I'm not sure about. Grey works nicely with brown and olive, but personally I wouldn't throw it in there because of the number of different colors you already have. That's decidedly personal taste and I don't have anything objective to back that up with. Also, if you decide to go with the real life examples of mixed camo and uniform look, having grey as the uniform color and grey spots as part of the camouflage, you'll lose contrast. Which may not be so great.

Of the options you gave, if you absolutely want to darken it a little, dark olive would be the way to go in my opinion. Now to be honest, I wouldn't do that either. Unless you see such small models in perfect light conditions, they will naturally appear darker than they actually are. Having lighter colors on them makes the paintjob easier to see and appreciate, and if that is ever in question I myself err on the side of caution and use lighter shades. Something to consider.

Alright, gentlemen! The fruits of my labor. C+C on the camo much appreciated!

Do you really need to shade the camo? I've painted it on 20mm figures in the past , and to be honest I don't think it needs to be shaded(when you consider the colours involved). There is a book that I have and you should see if you can get ahold of it on either Ebay or Amazon. It's called 'Brassey's book of camoflage'. It gives full page up close photographs of the camoflage and is very useful.
But as I said, considering the colours involved(which are mostly muted) on small figures it is debateable whether shading is worthwhile.

It's challenging. Practice on some cardstock you can throw away.

A friend of mine painted some for another friend and the second friend complained the figures didn't stand out enough from the bases or terrain around them. He tried to tell him that was the basic idea....

 posermcbogus wrote:
Also! For trousers! What did you go with? Initially, I was considering pure camo, but after a bit of research, it seems that Plantanenmuster was frequently mixed with more simple feldgrau trousers, and the collar was also feldgrau. Warcrimes and abhorrent ideologies aside, I think it looks quite dapper, though I don't know how well that translates to miniature form. Any thoughts?

The feldgrau collar is part of the fieldblouse under the camo. Camo smocks were collarless.

Oh! And, any tips for equipment colouration? The two ratlings are lugging quite a lot of gear - I'm toying with making it either plantanenmuster, or maybe feldgrau, but also just leather/sack cloth are options...

German leather equipment was generally black. Bread bag and canteen cover were a medium khaki.

If planning a wash, you might go a shade lighter on the camo colors and then wipe the wash off of any highlight locations and deepen shadow areas with another layer of wash.

there is a book in the Osprey range that is excellent for this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modelling-Waffen-SS-Figures-Osprey/dp/1841768375/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?keywords=ss+paint+osprey&qid=1577479924&sr=8-2-fkmr1

aimed at 1/32 scale but the techniques work, all using VMC colours, covers the various uniforms and suitable techniques with a view to applying them to models - he notes to use the colours etc so the darker bits are where you want shadows to be and similar