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Painting Digital Flora Camo Pattern

Introduction:

Here I will present a short step-by-step feature and describe the “flick technique” I use for painting the Russian "digital flora" camouflage pattern. The "flick technique" actually comes from a fellow modeler Karl Hoy, who described his method in the forum thread Painting modern Russian camouflage?

This is the pattern I'm trying to recreate, up close and personal.

Technique:

I'm using mostly Vallejo paint, and Tamiya primer and clear flat varnish spray.

First step is to cut and clean the figure; this particular figure is from Black Dog and it depicts one of the "polite people" from crysis in Ukraine 2014. I applied Tamiya white primer:

At this stage I decided to paint the face and eyes that show behind the balaclava mask:

Next I applied a coat of Vallejo 70894 cam. olive green all over the uniform and webbing.

Followed by a wash with the same color plus black and sepia.

Then, dry brushing first with base color, then add a touch of white. Now we have a base color that has shadows and highlights.

Before starting the flicking process, I gave the figure a coat of clear flat Tamiya varnish. This will help to protect the base color when correcting any mistakes of the flicking process. These are the tools I used:

For the tan/light green I made a mixture of 70942 light green, 70953 flat yellow, and a touch of 70881 yellow green. I tried different brushes until I decided which one made the smallest spots. Paint should be a little bit thinned for best results. Try different ratios of paint to thinner until you get the result you like testing on paper.

Now it is time to start flicking:

During the process, you get some larger spots, which I immediately removed with Vallejo airbrush cleaner using a small brush.

With a very fine brush, you can play a little with the digital shapes, so that there are not only spots, Thus helping the look of the digital pattern, as well as adding spots where the flicking proces didn't.

Next, I flicked the Brown, very sparsely. I used 70940 saddle brown.

Last I flicked 70950 black, even more sparsely than the brown.

You are done with the flicking. At this point the spots look very prominent. Don't worry, with the next step of washes they will become more subdued.

I did several washes using varying mixtures of Vallejo Model Wash 76514 Dark brown and 76503 dark yellow. Very thinned down. Yellower for the uniform and darker for the webbing equipment; that way you get a slightly different tone on both.

Painted and drybrushed kneepads, boots, and gloves:

Next I painted all the detail on the webbing:

Added the AK74 and the figure is finished.

Finally, here are some of the figures I painted using this particular technique.