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I just switched to painting my Space Marines in Salamander green and I'm thinking about doing something funky with a Repulsor tank. From closer than a few feet, I want there to a be a very fine snakeskin pattern visible on the front and side armor plates. There are lots of videos about people making little snakeskin capes for characters, but not much for big flat vehicles. Thousands of freehand scales are not an option because I'm trying to impress my nerdy friends, not win painting awards. One method I'm seeing are $20ish thin plastic sheets with scale patterns that you hold stationary with one hand and airbrush with the other. That looks really difficult to do well. An old car painting trick is to tape stockings or a mesh laundry bag against the panel and spray a top coat over it. Has anyone tried to do something similar on a vehicle sized mini?

Before any bio majors point out that salamanders are amphibians with smooth skin, I have a defense. Real salamanders come in virtually every color except kelly green and that's a common snake color. I would invoke the rule of cool, but first I have to make it actually look cool. Thank you for any help.

Salamanders are named after the mythical, dragon-like creature, not the little amphibians. That's why characters like Xavier had scaly cloaks. So you don't need to justify the paint job.

You might be able to get away with getting thin cardboard, cutting the scale pattern out with an x-acto knife, and then stippling it with a brush.

Yeah, I imagine that using scale pattern airbrush stencils and stippling with a sponge or drybrush would be a pretty quick and easy way to cover some flat panels.

There are self-adhesive plastic stencils that would help get a really good result. Alternatively, if you know a anyone with a 3d printer and some time available, you can create printed stencils that fit neatly into/over the panels of the tank to get a good result.

The generic thicker plastic stencils are harder to fit over the multi-level setups of a land raider so you will end up with very blurry edges on the spray pattern.

Old old painting trick for snake skin pattern that I saw in White Dwarf when they gave actual hobby advice:

A batch of onions usually comes in a mesh sack. Paint up the pattern color first, and then cover the model in question with the mesh sack and paint the scale color using an airbrush or spray can. You can get one-off airbrushes from a craft store if you don't have one, or can't get one. Don't limit yourself to onions, there are more than a few mesh sacks out there that produce is sold in.

I have that issue! They used it to do a crazy grid pattern on a wave serpent.

I've used Fallout Hobbies before, they're pretty decent. Have a look at, for instance:

https://www.fallouthobbies.com/products/fallout-hobbies-reptile-skin-airbrush-stencil

https://www.fallouthobbies.com/products/fallout-hobbies-snake-skin-airbrush-stencil