For Holy Terra Because space is scary

Painting Camo

Other than displaying that which I’ve built and painted, I really haven’t done anything tutorial-wise. However, I’ve been accepted into the From The Warp Blogger Group, so I suppose I should dispense some of my *ahem* “wisdom” onto the internets.

However, the only thing I’ve got pictures of at the moment that I can really go into detail on is my method of painting camouflage, which I’ve done for my Eldar Pathfinders. Now, I know there’s probably a million tutorials for painting camouflage, and this is not by any means the best, but I didn’t reference any of them when I did this so it’s all mine! I don’t have step-by-step images, but here are three shots of the final result (please note that the camo cloaks are about the only things finished on these models):

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Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Chaos Black
Bleached Bone
Scorpion Green
Snot Green
Thraka Green Wash

1. Basecoat Chaos Black.
2. Figure out which color you’re going to be working with. For this example (which will be useful for most camouflage), I used green.
3. Begin with large splotches of Snot Green, laying them down in a random pattern. You want to cover about 30-50% of the cloak with these splotches. Make sure your paint is completely dry between each of these steps. You don’t want blending – you want hard defined edges.
4. Add smaller splotches of Scorpion Green, again in a random pattern. Overlap the Snot Green splotches, and make sure to hit about 20% of the cloak. When you’re done with this, you’ll have 60-70% of the cloak covered.
5. Use the Bleached Bone to add much smaller splotches, again random and overlapping. Cover about 10% of the cloak. When you’re done, you want to have 70-80% of the cloak covered, with about 20% black showing through. It’s going to look pretty harsh at this point, but it’s going to start looking a lot better.
6. Drybrush with Scorpion Green just to pick up the edges.
7. Drybrush again with Bleached Bone to give a nice highlight.
8. Once that’s dry, grab your Thraka Green wash and cover the entire cloak. Don’t be afraid to go heavy with it, and don’t dilute it. You want a deep color here. Once I had the cloak covered in wash, I hit it with a hair dryer until it was completely dry. This will speed up the process, but don’t cut corners. You want that wash bone dry.
9. Repeat step 8.
10. Repeat step 8 again. That’s right, three layers of wash. This was enough to give even the black a slight green tinge, and really brings all the colors together, softens the edges, and makes the highlighting look even more natural than if you’d gone over it after the wash.

While I’ve only tried this with Green, I’m considering using Ogryn Flesh Wash over Snakebite Leather and Vermin Brown to achieve a desert camo pattern. I’d probably go with an Astronomican Grey or Codex Grey base for that, though.