Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of building a small STALKER-ish vignette in 1/72, and one of the centerpieces is planned to be a sniper in mismatched gear. While I was able to get acceptable results painting NATO style four tone camo on his trousers, I'm having issues doing the jacket. I tried doing flecktarn by lightly stippling the paint, but that only made the jacket a more nondescript color than anything. This is my first time painting a figure, can someone with more experience please advise if flecktarn is even achievable on such a small scale? And if yes, how?

Thanks,
Ian

i think that 1/72 scale that camo will be tough to pull off. I might error on painting the pattern larger that what you think it should look like. I paint tons of 28mm which is larger at 1/56 and even then it is hard to pull off those patterns.

I would just keep practicing as well. Also make sure you have decently quality brushes that have a sharp tip and keep your paint thin.

Maybe instead of a brush you could use a needle that has its point blunted a bit? I've used that before making freckles on a 1/6 headsculpt with good effect. Or one of those long sateh-skewers, there are a bit easier to hold on your hand.

My good brush can get almost a needle like point but at that scale i think those patterns my just get lost completely. But its worth a try. Its just paint and if it doesnt look good just go over it.

post a pic when you are done

You could try spackling on the paint. Basically you flick the bristles of the brush off the edge of stiff piece of card or paper onto the model bellow and it splashes small dots of paint on. You have to play about with the consistency of the paint on the brush to get the size of the spackling correct.

I have done some waffen-SS oak leaf pattern a while ago in that scale, and I believe it's quite OK. I'll post a picture of it later when I'm home.

For Flecktarn in that scale, I think it's best to settle on three colours. I know that's less than in the original, but it'll do. In that scale it's all about creating an illusion, not reproducing the exact same thing. Every colour you add would make it more difficult and the overall paint job thicker, resulting in a loss of details.

I would suggest
- a medium brown (add some white for scale effect),
- a medium olive drab/ green (add some white for scale effect)
- anthracite (not black, it is too dark considering scale effect)
I used brown as a base coat. For the remaining two colours, I used my smallest paintbrush (10/0) to randomly apply little dots or groups of dots.

Once I'll have posted the pics online, you will be able to judge by yourself whether you like the outcome.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thanks for the ideas, everyone! I think I'll have to use Nicolas' method, as with the small area involved, I don't think I can pull off the spackling. I think I'll try to remove the paint from the jacket and give it another go. Also, it seems that in yesterday's frustration I managed to get some of the brown that was supposed to go on the jacket on the trousers as well, and now have irregular five tone camo Happily, the front of the figure won't be that visible, so I won't have to redo the trousers completely, I just need to add a bit more black, as it mostly got covered up by the other colors.





Ian

Edit:

Stripped most of the paint off, as I decided to redo the trousers as well.