Hey guys, help me with something.

I'm building a demag + flak 38 from Italeri, and I'm about to paint his camouflage, but since I have no airbrush I don't want to ruin it. The Internal parts are already painted on Tan, so I'm planning to stay on Tan + Brown + Dark Green to his camo...

Do you guys know any technique for camo painting with regular brushes that gives a good look???? I'm trying to use dilluted paints to make the "smoke" effects, and then drybrush paint on the center of the camo... but even with masking tapes edges are hard to control!
Well, I hope to hear from you guys. Thanks

try using a liquid mask for each color or silly putty.

Put yourself into the crews situation . You had to paint your vehicle camouflage and all you have is a paint brush and cans of paint . What would you do . Would you cut out stencils or would you go for it ?

You might want to try sponging rather than painting with a brush. I'll be doing some experimenting with Vallejos on one of my next projects. Small bits of make up sponge seem to hold the most promise. One other idea is to use oil paint. Paint the outline and then feather the edges with a soft wide brush and then fill the centre. Experiment on a scrap kit or piece of plastic and let us know how it turns out.

Kimmo

Kimmo , you have been doing it with out an airbrush .

I have cut out a stencil. Stiff cardboard into a camo pattern. X-Acto knife cut into the cardboard is best. Hold over the model at a standard height and spray with a rattle can. Works pretty well. I have not tried silly putty but I hear that works well too. Base coat of brushed paint.

Yes, but not a soft edge yet. Hard edge is no problem, just needs a steady hand. I'm itching to try out a bunch of techniques, maybe this weekend.

Kimmo

What you do is use subtractive masking. Using spread out poster putty or Scotch Blue painters tape. Just paint an area green, don't worry about the shape or edges. When the paint is dry, place a pancake of poster putty or pre-cut tape over it. Then do the same with the brown. Cover the brown. Then cover any exposed green or brown with tan. Let dry and when you remove the poster putty or tape, you will have a very good looking 3 color camo.
This works even better with an airbrush, especially when doing "Japanese Style" camouflage.

One way to get a soft edge with a brush is to use enamels . You can feather the paint better than acrylics .

I have done this before on a German StuG using a spray can for the base coat. Then using oil paints in multiple thin layers building up full color saturation in the middle and feathering out the edge for the brown and green. It takes longer because you need to let the oils dry before you do the next layer, but the final effect is pretty good. Unfortunately I can not show you a photo of the final product as the StuG has long ago suffered catastrophic battle damage due to moving several times

Gary

Well I actually found one photo of it stuck way back on my photobucket account. It is the first brown color on a gloss coated base, so it's really kind of hard to see. But it did turn out pretty good when it was all finished. Now lets see if I can figure out how to post a photo here.

[IMG]http://i560.photobucket.com/albums/ss50/glc62/001-15.jpg" BORDER="0">/image.file[/img]

For a feathered effect try to use enamels with drybrushing. They dry slower, and so you have more time to blend in the edges of the pattern. Cut a good #2, #3 paintbrush flat and use this. You do not need the best sable brushes for this purpose, actually a cheaper but stiffer bristled brush is better. You may need to make more than one pass, but that might also give you a more realistic effect.

(in reality camo colors - roughly until late 1944 - were field applied over Panzergelb by any tool crews were able to find, ideally spray guns but also round brushes, paint rollers or even brooms).

okay, thank you all! I will try some of the techniques presented here.... I unfortunatelly have only acrylics.. One last question,

After I finished painting the camouflages, do I do an overall wash/filter with the base color? does it works well with acrylic?

Thank you

Drybrushing might also work with acrylics if you use retarder medium.

Washes work with acrylics but you really have to go slow and build up the color and then feather the edge quickly. I picked that up doing acrylic portraits. You don't need retarder if you're fast. But comes with lots of practice and a deft touch. Not for the faint of heart.


The old brush with the bristles cut to make a dauber works too. With practice you can even do convincing Luftwaffe spray camouflage on aircraft. Do a couple of fighters and you can develop that deft touch quickly. Almost a reason to build airplanes.

Bruno-

Check out my Dragon Nashorn - it was painted entirely with a paintbrush (I now have an airbrush but haven't used it yet):



The method I used was to use successive washes of varying intensity. First you apply a very thin wash to the entire area you want painted so it appears as only a tint of the color - not a solid area of color. Next you apply a slightly darker wash within the area just painted that doesn't actually cover the entire area - you want the outer edge to be the lightest wash. Next you apply 2-3 other coats of successively darker washes to the interior of the area - think of concentric circles with the center the darkest and the outer circle almost invisible. Once the entire application has dried you can use an overall wash to further blend the colors together and weather it at the same time - I used Polly S Dirt color. Good luck!

that's amazing, thank you.
I found a really good camo pattern that doesn't need airbrush, check this out:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/1779130_782029565203065_6247691313171852638_n.jpg?oh=0d90bc1c525908a7dd21b1f168192c14&oe=54DF50EF&__gda__=1428005286_de6f9b511feb67fd641e8627814f8901

i might try this one on my actual model, and for the next model i will apply the sucessive washes that you showed for me.

Thank you all for the help, i'm finishing the model, just need to paint the camo and do the weathering and it's done.

Cheers!