15mm Modern US Style Change...

After the last batch of modern US guys I painted, I was a little disappointed with how dark they turned out so I did a little research and I tried a few different techniques.

Bear in mind, I'm not one of those guys who are good at sharp detail on 15mm figures so this is the "time-starved" solution to an age old problem - digital camouflage on tiny figures.

I think they look much better than the first batch this time around and I'll talk about some of the things I did differently.

First of all, digital camouflage is tough even on bigger figures and there are many excellent methods out there where painters who are much more talented try and talk you through it.  My goal, as always, is to get a respectable army on the table in a reasonable amount of time.  For someone who wore this exact uniform for quite a few years, I can say that at a distance, the tan against the greenish-gray-sage look like tan splotches.  So that's what you have here.

This time around, I dulled down the sage green by adding a generous amount of gray to it.  Same with the tan.  It is dulled down to be more subtle.  The point is tricking your eyes right?  Also the black ink wash I gave them was actually covering up the camo so I dulled the wash down significantly.  Probably 3:1 water with some grey thrown in for good measure.

The tan should be visible on the figure, but not prominent where it looks just like a blob.  The problem I always run into applying camo to small figures is my camo looks too blobby.  You want splotches, not blobs.  Does that make any sense?

The soldier on the right has a slightly different technique.

 The G.I. who is firing was basecoated with tan first and then had the greenish-gray blobs applied to him after. Not much of a noticeable difference, and that's a good thing!  Also no dry brushing on any of them as I wanted the tan to be visible.

I think for future troopers, I'm going to add the green after the basecoat in tan.  This worked well.

light coat of diluted black ink on him just to make the beautiful detail on these Rebel miniatures stand out.

 I painted the kit green again just to make it stand out.  One problem I ran into is that I mixed up the order and washed the figure before I painted the kit.  The green kit would look better with that same wash on it.  Next time!  There are plenty of figures standing by to practice on.

1/100 M1A1 in there for scale.