There are a few ways to paint digital camo. The most popular and easiest way by far is using the sponge method. I will cover the Dry brush method and the cross-hatch technique in this tutorial.
Cross-Hatch: I used a very fine script liner brush to achieve this technique. First you will have to figure out your "base" color. Green MARPAT will require a green base color, like the the pic below. Then just alternate your colors from light to dark, such as green, brown, khaki, black, to get this pattern or any other colored pattern you are attempting to paint. From normal viewing distance, this will appear as a digital pattern... however due to the zoom of my camera you can see things that the naked eye may not pick up. I suppose it came out ok. It looked better with less black. Here are a few shots of the work.
The below pic is a step by step of the process in which I got the above pattern. I used a marker to make it easy to understand/follow. Step 1, make vertical lines of varying length in different locations on the part. Step 2, make horizontal lines of varying length over the vertical lines. In order to get the solid digital sections, fill in the spaces with what ever solid color you are working with. Cross-hatching is a very tedious process as you have to do the above steps for each color to get the results you are looking for.
For the Dry Brush technique, I used a Hog bristle brush and applied the paint in a "tapping" like method. This type of brush has stiff springy bristles that are also naturally split at the end and will hold more paint. Just tap off the excess on a paper towel until you get the amount of coverage you are looking for. Too much paint will just make a glob pattern. Below is an example of the finished work. I recommend getting a few different sized brushes and trimming them to achieve various sized patterns. It looks similar to the sponge method, just another way to apply it.
Either of these techniques will render a unique paint job. I sought an alternate method, the cross-hatch, because the sponge technique sometimes appears like Swiss Alpenflage. Maybe its just my eyes... but I definitely understand the difficulty in getting digital camo to look digital.
Semper Fi!
MD
Cross-Hatch: I used a very fine script liner brush to achieve this technique. First you will have to figure out your "base" color. Green MARPAT will require a green base color, like the the pic below. Then just alternate your colors from light to dark, such as green, brown, khaki, black, to get this pattern or any other colored pattern you are attempting to paint. From normal viewing distance, this will appear as a digital pattern... however due to the zoom of my camera you can see things that the naked eye may not pick up. I suppose it came out ok. It looked better with less black. Here are a few shots of the work.
The below pic is a step by step of the process in which I got the above pattern. I used a marker to make it easy to understand/follow. Step 1, make vertical lines of varying length in different locations on the part. Step 2, make horizontal lines of varying length over the vertical lines. In order to get the solid digital sections, fill in the spaces with what ever solid color you are working with. Cross-hatching is a very tedious process as you have to do the above steps for each color to get the results you are looking for.
For the Dry Brush technique, I used a Hog bristle brush and applied the paint in a "tapping" like method. This type of brush has stiff springy bristles that are also naturally split at the end and will hold more paint. Just tap off the excess on a paper towel until you get the amount of coverage you are looking for. Too much paint will just make a glob pattern. Below is an example of the finished work. I recommend getting a few different sized brushes and trimming them to achieve various sized patterns. It looks similar to the sponge method, just another way to apply it.
Either of these techniques will render a unique paint job. I sought an alternate method, the cross-hatch, because the sponge technique sometimes appears like Swiss Alpenflage. Maybe its just my eyes... but I definitely understand the difficulty in getting digital camo to look digital.
Semper Fi!
MD
