Tuesday, July 28, 2015

WIP: Pinned Down, Taking Fire! - Painting Urban Camouflauge

With the base painted and done (for the time being), it was time to get Woody and Badger painted! As I mentioned in the previous post I struggled with the camouflage pattern and coloring. Finally after a bunch of great suggestions from the folks on Twitter I decided on grey Urban camo.

Painting camouflage boggled my mind though. I've never attempted camo before, because I was always worried that it'd come out looking like I had just slapped random splotches of color all over it. But thanks to the internets and especially Kujo Painting's Painting Camo video, I felt confident enough to get started on Woody and Badger.

I knew I didn't want to mix paint. With the heat over the last few days it would dry out too quick. Plus if I had to stop, I didn't want to worry about mixing paint and color matching later. So I went with a palette of Vallejo's grey Model Color paints. These and their layers are:
  • Base Coat: Neutral Grey
  • Layer 1: White
  • Layer 2: Grey Green
  • Layer 3: German Grey
While Urban camo has black in it, I decided to go with German Grey instead. This was because I am using Black for the other pieces of clothing and didn't want the camo pattern to blend into it.

I followed the steps in Kujo's video, but with some minor changes. My process was like this:


Base Coat: Neutral Grey
Wash #1: Wash crevasses with thinned Gray Green
Layer #1: Paint random splotches of White on all Neutral Grey surfaces
Layer #2: Paint random splotches of Grey Green, slighly overlapping and connecting between white splotches.
Layer #3: Paint random splotches of German Grey on top of white and grey splotches, trying to go along the edge of the grey splotches and keeping lines thinner than the others.
Wash #2: Wash all areas with thinned GW Nuln Oil.


The camo turned out great! I surprised myself with it and have gotten a ton of compliments from everyone
that sees it. Not bad for my first ever attempt at it. But I do think I'll follow up with another wash of Nuln Oil in the creases, just to help give the fabric a bit more dimension.
 
Next up are the black sections of clothing. I'll need to simulate leather on the gloves and boots, while the straps, masks and other bits need to look like fabric. Also, the guns need to look like painted metal, which means edge highlighting. Other than that, it's details, details, details.

I should have it finished up soon. But, as always, you can watch it progress in a more up-to-date fashion via Twitter. Hopefully it will be done this week, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be.