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2016/03/19 09:26:01
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
I'll start by saying that no, I do not have an airbrush. How then should I paint camo on chimeras and leman russes? I plan on doing white and gray, just have them white at the moment. All of the explanations I've seen so far involve an airbrush and was wondering if there was an easy way to do without.
If not I can always have a friend do it for me, but I prefer to paint all my own stuff, even though they're admittedly better at it than I am
2016/03/19 09:32:04
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
Lots of thin layers if you want it to look smooth. Use a brush of appropriate size (if your camo bands are 40mm thick, don't use a brush that's only 4mm ). Duncan did a video on painting tank camo....
This guy does decent paintjobs with only a hairy brush and they come out well, he mostly uses enamels though which are more time consuming to paint because you have to wait for them to dry, but some of the basics apply to acrylics too...
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
2016/03/19 17:05:33
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
I used masking tape to cover the areas I wanted as the secondary color. Then sprayed the whole tank in the primary. Stripped off the masking tape and filled in the secondary areas.
Voila.
Dman137 wrote:
goobs is all you guys will ever be
By 1-irt: Still as long as Hissy keeps showing up this is one of the most entertaining threads ever.
"Feelin' goods, good enough".
2016/03/19 18:24:35
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
The tricky part is edge highlight and not messing up the camo coherency. in a grey/white camo, highlights could make or brake the camo feel.
Painting some jungle camo tanks I started with spraying them beige, then did a large irregular net pattern with thick lines of dark green.
Then I used alot of green and sepia shade.
After that I did a simple drybrush highlight with bone white to bring out rivets and edges.
And finaly more washes to harmonise the highlights with the camo.
The highlights melt together with the camo, but not all in a good way Im afraid. Looks kind of dull, but also realisticaly camouflaged I guess.
2016/03/19 20:12:37
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
eosgreen wrote: see you can do it but imo it doesn't look very good.
Like most things in the hobby, it can look as good as you are willing to put in the time to make it look good. If you go to a scale model show (or even check out a scale modelling forum) you'll find most people airbrushing, a few people hairy brush painting and it looks obvious they hairy brush painted it, and a couple of rare people who hairy brush painted it so well that you can't fault it next to the airbrush painted ones (to the point you might not be able to tell at all unless someone specifically points it out to you). Even most airbrushed models you see have flaws, if they don't it means the person probably spent a decent amount of time on it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/03/19 20:13:12
2016/03/19 21:09:03
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
eosgreen wrote: see you can do it but imo it doesn't look very good.
Like most things in the hobby, it can look as good as you are willing to put in the time to make it look good. If you go to a scale model show (or even check out a scale modelling forum) you'll find most people airbrushing, a few people hairy brush painting and it looks obvious they hairy brush painted it, and a couple of rare people who hairy brush painted it so well that you can't fault it next to the airbrush painted ones (to the point you might not be able to tell at all unless someone specifically points it out to you). Even most airbrushed models you see have flaws, if they don't it means the person probably spent a decent amount of time on it.
I just think that you cant match tanks camo as well as an airbrush. Aren't cars and tanks painted in real life with larger airbrushes? Really its personal pref but I'm capable of doing a seamless blend and It just doesn't look as good as an airbrush to me personally. The sectioned off style of camo is not as nice as the airbrushes natural fade which normally looks bad but because its tank camo it looks extra good and realistic
again all personal pref. I was kinda negative, you can use some sort of putty to block off sections. You prime it white, block off the sections with putty and then prime it black. Now you just clean it up and paint the proper colors over the areas.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/03/19 21:15:20
eosgreen wrote: see you can do it but imo it doesn't look very good.
Like most things in the hobby, it can look as good as you are willing to put in the time to make it look good. If you go to a scale model show (or even check out a scale modelling forum) you'll find most people airbrushing, a few people hairy brush painting and it looks obvious they hairy brush painted it, and a couple of rare people who hairy brush painted it so well that you can't fault it next to the airbrush painted ones (to the point you might not be able to tell at all unless someone specifically points it out to you). Even most airbrushed models you see have flaws, if they don't it means the person probably spent a decent amount of time on it.
I just think that you cant match tanks camo as well as an airbrush. Aren't cars and tanks painted in real life with larger airbrushes? Really its personal pref but I'm capable of doing a seamless blend and It just doesn't look as good as an airbrush to me personally. The sectioned off style of camo is not as nice as the airbrushes natural fade which normally looks bad but because its tank camo it looks extra good and realistic
again all personal pref. I was kinda negative, you can use some sort of putty to block off sections. You prime it white, block off the sections with putty and then prime it black. Now you just clean it up and paint the proper colors over the areas.
If the camo is applied in the factory or in some kind of depot they'd use spray guns, but field painted tanks would be brush painted(though i doubt that happens these days)
2016/03/20 07:06:28
Subject: How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
eosgreen wrote: see you can do it but imo it doesn't look very good.
Like most things in the hobby, it can look as good as you are willing to put in the time to make it look good. If you go to a scale model show (or even check out a scale modelling forum) you'll find most people airbrushing, a few people hairy brush painting and it looks obvious they hairy brush painted it, and a couple of rare people who hairy brush painted it so well that you can't fault it next to the airbrush painted ones (to the point you might not be able to tell at all unless someone specifically points it out to you). Even most airbrushed models you see have flaws, if they don't it means the person probably spent a decent amount of time on it.
I just think that you cant match tanks camo as well as an airbrush. Aren't cars and tanks painted in real life with larger airbrushes? Really its personal pref but I'm capable of doing a seamless blend and It just doesn't look as good as an airbrush to me personally. The sectioned off style of camo is not as nice as the airbrushes natural fade which normally looks bad but because its tank camo it looks extra good and realistic
again all personal pref. I was kinda negative, you can use some sort of putty to block off sections. You prime it white, block off the sections with putty and then prime it black. Now you just clean it up and paint the proper colors over the areas.
methebest wrote:If the camo is applied in the factory or in some kind of depot they'd use spray guns, but field painted tanks would be brush painted(though i doubt that happens these days)
Real life tanks and planes.... it depends which tank, where it came from and where it was painted. Most tanks were sprayed out of the factory I guess, I'm sure some weren't though. In the field, maintenance units would usually have spray guns and compressors, but if they didn't then the unit may repaint their tanks with anything they had on hand from brushes to mops or rags. There's a whole plethora of ways things could be done, if looking at historic vehicles you usually pick one and emulate it. For example, German tanks from early 1943 got a coat of dark yellow from the factory but then the maintenance crews were supplied olive green and red-brown to paint the camo and it was up to them how they wanted to do it so you could have a wide range of results. And that was only one army, in one part of the world, for less than 2 years in the middle of the WW2.
But realistically it doesn't matter all that much. You can hairy brush paint something smooth enough that you can't tell the difference between a hairy brush model and an airbrushed model. Especially if you top it off with weathering and a coat of varnish, if you lay down a smooth coat with a hairy brush and then top it with a sprayed satin or matte varnish, it will LOOK like the whole thing was sprayed.
It's just time consuming is all. Lots of thin layers, being careful not to build up ridges of paint, ideally using paint that self levels well. But even with the popularity of airbrushes you'll still occasionally see high end models with hand painted camo that is damned near flawless.
If you're talking about soft edged camo, obviously that's easier to do with an airbrush, though it's still not all that easy if you are trying to emulate a real life vehicle in a smaller scale as it can be extremely difficult to scale down the fade effects and avoid having unrealistically large blends or tinting an area you didn't mean to tint, it can also be time consuming to emulate well even with an airbrush.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As an example, here's a few hand painted aircraft...
This one looks as good as most airbrushed model I see. Of course you don't have the preshading, but if you look at pictures of real aircraft they don't always have that "dark around the edges" look either so it's not a problem and the rest of the weathering ties it together. http://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=2234
Admittedly tanks can be a bit trickier because the hard edges of the armour it can be harder to get a smooth coat, but on the flip side you don't need to paint a tank nearly as smooth as a plane for it to look good (the smooth curving surfaces of a plane really highlight flaws like you wouldn't believe).
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2016/03/20 10:48:32
2016/03/21 04:02:58
Subject: Re:How do you paint camo (without airbrushing)?
The technique I use is to simply freehand the stripes, and then use a stippling/heavy drybrush of a mix of both camo colors along the meeting edges of the stripes. It creates an optical illusion of a feathered edge, and most people automatically assume it has been airbrushed because they're conditioned to see it that way.
This Baneblade was sprayed with a bone-colored basecoat, and then had freehand reddish-brown stripes painted over the basecoat. Then, I came back in with a heavy drybrush of a mix of the base color and stripe color. It takes some time, but it's not difficult to understand and execute the technique.
