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I'd like to do a pattern something like this for my Valhallans



The trouble is any of these 'Winter Urban" style camouflage designs seem to be 4 colours

I've been starting to paint main armour colour on my Space Wolves and vehicles with an airbrush, and I thought maybe I could try a multi-stage spray using masking fluids to design a layered camouflage, but I don't have any experience with masking fluids.

Anyone know if this sort of thing would be feasible to even bother trying, or have any other suggestions?

I've seen at least a 4/5 color-scheme on guards employed.

IIRC it was 3 woodland-patterned blues with black and white dots added afterwards (some sort of blue-verion of the US 6-color-desert pattern). I'm not sure how it was done though, my best guess is basecolor with one color and then added blotches of the other two. it's probably feasible with masking stuff, but quite a lot of work, especially for tiny areas and smal blots.

I have seen a video where masking fluid was used to simulate paint damage by painting a metallic then splotching the masking stuff with a sponge all over. Then when that is dry you spray the paint color on top then when dry use a stiff brush to remove the mask.

That could work and I would read reviews on the masking stuff you are planning on using as I believe Humbrol if not removed in a timely matter (I want to say within 24-48 hours) will become permanent and wont come off with a stiff brush.

You would probably spend more time fiddling with masking fluid than you would with a brush painting the colours on. The benefit of airbushes revolve around either volume, or the quality of finish. You wouldn't be able to do volume particularly easily with masking fluid changes and the finish on a camo scheme is largely irrelevant as you are actually trying to get blobs and feathering as part of the scheme.

I would just use a brush. I did a woodland scheme and it doesn;t take as long as you might think once you have the jittery hand technique down pat

Masking Fluid is a bit of a PITA to use. I would not recommend it for doing a disruptive pattern camouflage scheme.

Much easier to work out the sequence of four or five layers of colours, probably starting from a base light tan, then green, brown and black. There almost certainly are guides or tutorials floating around the WWW.

The plus of disruptive pattern is that there are supposed to be no repeats, so painting by hand is going to have a really good effect.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Masking Fluid is a bit of a PITA to use. I would not recommend it for doing a disruptive pattern camouflage scheme.

Much easier to work out the sequence of four or five layers of colours, probably starting from a base light tan, then green, brown and black. There almost certainly are guides or tutorials floating around the WWW.

The plus of disruptive pattern is that there are supposed to be no repeats, so painting by hand is going to have a really good effect.

^^^^^^^ This. I did some scout pants in camo and just did layers of different colors in a random pattern.

 Taldeer wrote:
I have seen a video where masking fluid was used to simulate paint damage by painting a metallic then splotching the masking stuff with a sponge all over. Then when that is dry you spray the paint color on top then when dry use a stiff brush to remove the mask.

Yeh I've seen videos like that too, which is what gave me the idea.

I've been considering simplifying it to 3 colours - Doing an initial shaded colour of say light grey, then masking areas with the fluid to keep grey, and doing a shaded olive coat. Then the mask would come off, giving a 2 colour pattern, both of which would be shaded, and then applying that small areas of black or very dark green over top with a brush

The reason I wanted to mask and airbrush was so that shading would be consistent across colour changes