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Any suggestions for a tool/method to apply sponge camo pattern on grunt sized models? Haven't been able to find a sponge with small enough holes to have that effect at the micro level. TIA.

Hmmm, good question.

I know a firm I used to use in a previous job that sold foam strips that had different densities, while they wouldn't be approachable (You'd get 101 questions about why you would need it, MOQ's, market etc)

Though along the same lines, you could try a DIY store or hardware store that sells these foam strips such as ones that go in door frames etc, failing that, there are also the pads used in ink cartridges, but these tend to be pretty dense so i'm not sure how good they would be if you managed to slice it in half.

You could also try making your own using expanding foam, though I couldn't say how effective that would be hole wise and the fact it wouldn't be too flexible.

Either way, you're probably going to have to experiment with different sponges to find one that works for you

Maybe try a makeup sponge? They come in various sizes and I've seen triangle shaped ones that narrow down to a pretty thin edge.

Make a sponge. Take a piece of pluck foam from your army trays and pluck peices from it with pliers so that its uneven and rough looking. Then dip into paint, dip on paper towel to get most of it off. THen dab onto model.

I did this with my Flames of War German tanks, works well. You also may want to google camo patterns for Flames of War/Bolt Action Tanks and see what comes up.

What if you use an old beat-up drybrush and just stipple the paints on to the surface by dabbing the bristles against it?

 Zingraff wrote:
What if you use an old beat-up drybrush and just stipple the paints on to the surface by dabbing the bristles against it?

This can work too. There are a LOT of camo patterns out there. Diff patterns achieve diff looks. Really just depends on what you want.

I did Splinter camo on a bunch of germans which is basically triangle and then connect with sharp lines.

Have a look at things like eyeshadow applicator sponges, I'd have thought something like that would do the trick.

 Zingraff wrote:
What if you use an old beat-up drybrush and just stipple the paints on to the surface by dabbing the bristles against it?

This was what I was going to suggest; small dead brush with relatively stiff bristles. Did autumn SS camo on some 1/72 Germans that way and it came out pretty good. Would have to do some serious digging to find them and take pics...

T

I tried the sponge method before and didnt like it at all. I ended up looking at the tutorial section in here to learn a basic 3 color camo method and it works really well. Specially in a mass of grunts like IG.

I found this online and thought of this post. it has different size sponges.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Chipping-Effect-Sponge-Pen-Set-40314/172267818911?epid=1383421976&hash=item281bf64f9f:g:ig8AAOSwEjFXf~oz

While by no means are you expected to go to this level of work, the most important part of planning a camouflage pattern on infantry is to think in Layers. For this paintjob I had a set of Swiss Alpenflage on hand, and I looked at all the overlap points on the colours to figure out which were always on top. If you're doing this at home with no actual base reference, it's generally a good idea to go light to dark, but you can come back with light afterwards - American Chocolate Chip Desert camo is an example - the light brown is the base, the darker brown applied to that and then the white spots are added afterwards. Similarly, my Alpenflage, those bright green spots are the last layer in the paintjob.

This approach to layers also lets you use the space a bit more efficiently and it lets you work down to the finer points. Start with the base, then do larger patches and smaller with each layer, with overlap on the colours in most cases. It'll avoid some of the challenge, and a good fine brush is really an asset for freehanding this stuff.

The issues I see often with 28mm camo patterns is they get too busy and do what they are designed to do. That is, they break up the outline of the model in question.

To avoid that a simple pattern like KingCracker's above will work best for this scale.

Here are a couple decent tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZF2AwLr4MM

http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tutorial-basic-painting-camouflage.html

And, some good reference material;

http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Main_Page