After deciding I didn't like my SWAT style Ariadnans I stripped them and now I need to settle on a scheme. That said, I think I want to do a winter camo. Any advice on painting camo?
Look up real world patterns and try to work from light to dark. A bit of abstraction will be needed since the sale of the camo pattern will need to be larger to avoid looking muddy on the mini. Angels Vol 2 book had a good guide on painting cammo on a Devil Dog mini.
This al'Hawwa was painted more or less like @deep-green-x describes: - a base of green paint, - randomly scattered L-shaped lements in light grey, dark grey and black (if memory serves me). Yes, they do criss-cross. A slightly different variant I used on this Djanbazan team: this time it is yellow, brown and black spots against dark green background. In the end, I like the L-shape more. Actually a pity I don't have a pic of my Bandit, as there was an L-shape pattern used against a bluish background. Quite interesting result... Also, the L-shape ic closer to a deforming camo style :) One caveat: painitng an entire model in camo pattern is a bad idea - while it is realistic (RL you can be dressed in a particular camo head to toe, and even have your weapon painted or otherwise made match the pattern. yes, it is practical), it looks absolutely dull on a mini (or actual soldier...). Which is the reason why I left the webbing brown, and added a few lively, non-camouflage elemnts on each mini.
Winter camo has the advantage to be done without too much work (dark green spots on a white field for example): Or allows some unusual colors: You can take a look at camopedia for inspiration. Totally agreeing with that. The miniature outline and various parts need to be well defined in order to be "legible" (which is the opposite of what a camouflage is doing).
Don't paint camo. No, really. I learned this the hard way when I painted an entire mechanized 40k Imperial Guard army. Actual camo looks fuzzy and undefined on models, so what you want is more of a caricature version of camo, so something that looks like camo but doesn't actually function as camo. Spoiler: My final results
Zewrath is right...don't go for the full camo. Paint the miniature white with the appropriate shading. After that dapple specks of differing shades of grey to give the appearance of the camo. Kind like I did here with the Chasseur.
Thanks for all the advice. It's helped a lot. Thinking white fatigues with icy blue specks. Then a dark grey armor and webbing to have some contrast.
This model is just right. If you paint a real camouflage pattern, your models will look like lumps. Stick with faded colors and suggest camouflage instead of actually doing it.
