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After doing a bit of searching here and abroad I haven't been able to find any techniqes for faded and battle worn unit markings for both troops and vehicles and I'm left wondering which is the best way
to go about doing them. Having not tried either method I'm curious is it better to try and hand paint them all/ use stencils or is it better to use decals and paint over them?

Any suggestions, recommendations, or other ideas that I haven't thought of are welcome and appreciated.

I think it would really depend on how complex the unit marking is. My armies have some pretty intricate chapter badges, so i use transfers, and then paint over them. I would say that it really depends on what you are most comfortable with. If you can free hand with confidence, then try that out, either way, you are going to want to paint/transfer the clean version first, and then add the battle damage.

Just remember, if you do use transfers, make sure to get some Microsol and Microset, just to make sure they look really good. No point in wasting time on transfers if they are going to look like, well, transfers

Mostly I'm looking at stripes and numbers. Nothing particularily fancy though I'm not sure I'm all that comfortable freehanding numbers on so many infantry figs.
I don't have a lot of experience with decals and even with the microsol products (I have both) I'm curious if it's noticable that the transfer has been painted over?

Thanks for the feedback

Soviet Yam wrote:I think it would really depend on how complex the unit marking is. My armies have some pretty intricate chapter badges, so i use transfers, and then paint over them. I would say that it really depends on what you are most comfortable with. If you can free hand with confidence, then try that out, either way, you are going to want to paint/transfer the clean version first, and then add the battle damage.

Just remember, if you do use transfers, make sure to get some Microsol and Microset, just to make sure they look really good. No point in wasting time on transfers if they are going to look like, well, transfers

Do we have a good Microsol/Microset tutorial here on Dakka?

If not, we probably should...

Soviet Yam - you're volunteered!

Here's a valkyrie that I did with worn numbers and squadron markings..

basically I painted it with shadow gray as the main color, then the stripes in mechrite red and space wolf gray. Then, I went back to shadow gray and just splotched it on randomy over the stripes, then I washed the whole thing with watered down chaos black for the shading.

for the numbers, I used regular decals and after they were dry (I waited a whole day), I went back over them and lightly sanded the numbers with a little piece of very fine sandpaper. You have to be careful to just sand the decal part, not the paint.

I also read that you can spray the whole thing with a flat varnish first, and then sand the decal and that gives better and safer results.

Alpharius wrote:

Do we have a good Microsol/Microset tutorial here on Dakka?

If not, we probably should...

Soviet Yam - you're volunteered!

Hahahaha Id love to, but sadly, Dakka is as close as i can get to modeling while i am at school. All of my stuff is on the other side of the country...

Necros wrote:Here's a valkyrie that I did with worn numbers and squadron markings..

basically I painted it with shadow gray as the main color, then the stripes in mechrite red and space wolf gray. Then, I went back to shadow gray and just splotched it on randomy over the stripes, then I washed the whole thing with watered down chaos black for the shading.

for the numbers, I used regular decals and after they were dry (I waited a whole day), I went back over them and lightly sanded the numbers with a little piece of very fine sandpaper. You have to be careful to just sand the decal part, not the paint.

I also read that you can spray the whole thing with a flat varnish first, and then sand the decal and that gives better and safer results.

Great looking Valk! Looks beaten up but not too weathered that it wouldn't be safe to fly in.

For the vehicle striping I plan to mask off the areas but I don't think that method will be practical for figs.
What grit paper did you use, something like 600 grit?

yeah just do freehand for figures. it shouldn't matter if you can't paint it perfectly straight at first if you're going to dab your base color over the line to make it look worn. I didn't use a mask for the valk, just painted carefully

the sandpaper I used was just called "very fine", didn't notice any numbers. Just get the finest grit you can get at your hardware store, or if you have a good hobby shop you can check there. I found some hobby sand paper before that was like very-very-very fine, but it's usually pricer and a smaller piece