A Gamer’s Guide to Painting Camouflage

The idea of camouflage has been a part of military uniforms going back at least as far as 17th
century Britain, and it will continue to be as long as soldiers are involved in active combat. Camouflage
schemes have evolved over time, but the purpose has remained the same – making your forces less
visible to your opponent. This guide is going to cover painting a generic camouflage pattern based on
the US Woodland uniform and a way to simulate modern digital camouflage patterns at a miniature
scale.

Painting “Woodland” Camouflage

The US Woodland pattern is one of the most commonly used patterns in the world. The US has
phased out the pattern, but many countries still use it exclusively, or color variants for particular
environments. It is a 4 color pattern that is predominantly green with sections of light tan/khaki, brown,
and black in irregular, organic shapes.

This pattern is actually easier to paint than it might seem. There are really only 5 steps to
getting a believable version of this pattern. For this class, we’re going to paint an urban scheme in this
style because we’re going to do a digital woodland pattern.

Step 1: Base coat of dark gray. (I used a dark grey primer to save a little time on this step.)
Step 2: Add patches of a lighter gray. Vary the size and shape of these patches and try not to have a
repeating pattern. Leave about 2/3-3/4 of the dark gray showing.

Step 3: Add in patches of white. Make sure to have these patches overlapping some of your lighter gray
from the previous step as well.

Step 4: Add small black patches that overlap bits of the colors from steps 2 and 3, as well as the original
base color. Keep these patches small, and spread them all over the pattern.

The final step to painting this kind of camouflage is shading. Normally, you would shade and
highlight miniatures, but that doesn’t work for camouflage. First of all, you’d have to build up highlights
separately for each individual color in your pattern. That is incredibly impractical at this scale. Second,
real camouflage uniforms don’t start to show lighter highlights until they are old and worn out. It’s a
design feature. Shadows are natural, but you just don’t see bright areas on a camouflage uniform until
it is old and a bit faded. Add in the shadows with two thin washes. For this pattern, a dark gray or a
thinned black will work. For other camouflage schemes, use dark colors that compliment the other
colors, but avoid using straight black. It gives too harsh of a contrast. For woodland and desert
camouflage, an earthy brown works well, and a cooler gray is perfect for winter/arctic camouflage.

Apply a thin wash over all of the camouflage areas. This is going to help blend the colors
together a bit, and give your models what little highlight they are going to have. After this wash dries,
add more of your shadow color into the deeper recesses on the model and around pockets and other
edges.

That’s all there is to it. Since your patches of color are completely random, you can easily work
in an assembly line fashion, painting each step on all of your models. When you’ve painted the last
model for each step, the first should be dry and ready for you to start the next step.

Here are some colors to use in other schemes.

Woodland Camo

Base color: green

1st color: brown

2nd color: tan

3rd color: black

Desert Camo

Base color: a warm tan

1st color: light brown

2nd color: black

Acrtic Camo (very similar to the urban camo)

Base color: White

1st color: medium gray, or a pale blue grey

2nd color: light gray

Use the two colors sparingly, keeping the majority of the camouflage white.
Painting Digital Camouflage

After all of the careful painting in the previous style of camouflage, painting digital camouflage
requires nothing more than a toothbrush, a few different colors of paint, and a willingness to get your
hands dirty. I came up with this method after I was asked if I could paint one of the preview models for
the USMC infantry from Defiance games. (The models should be available before the end of the year.) I
realized that at this scale, painting a recognizable pattern would be next to impossible, but making it
look like I had painted a digital camouflage pattern would actually be pretty simple.

Step 1: Base coat with a suitable color. For this model, I used the Dark Green color from Krylon’s
Camouflage line of spray paints. It bonds to plastic and metal, so it is an ideal way to lay down a
basecoat. There is a nice selection of colors for various camouflage environments, too.

Step 2: Add a little of your first color to your palette (you can work from dark to light, light to dark, or
just mix it up depending on your mood), and then put your brush in it. You don’t want a lot of paint in
the brush. Wipe off a bunch of the paint on a paper towel before you start the next step. Put your
thumb on the bristles, and gently pull back towards the handle. (I told you we’d be getting our hands
dirty.) This will flick paint on the model. Spin the miniature around and flick paint from above as well.
You should end up with the model covered by tiny little dots of paint on top of the base color.

Step 3: Repeat Step 2 with each of your remaining colors. You can vary how much you put on
depending on how you think the model looks. You can always go back to a previous color if you think
you need more, too.

Step 4: Add a dark wash over the area with the camouflage pattern like you did for the woodland
camouflage.

Step 5: Repaint the non-camouflage areas of your model with your primer color, and then paint them as
normal. The flicking can sometimes leave the surface a little uneven, so this isn’t necessarily the best
camouflage to use on models with very fine details.