Desert Camo for special forces in SW Legions

Aug 16

3 min read

The last unit unpainted in my droid army is the special forces unit. This was mainly because being a bear of small brain I couldn't figure out whether they were worth it not in game terms but also how to actually use them. Then for no good reason I was looking at some desert camo patterns and was overcome by the desire to paint some desert camo and these guys were the only candidate.

The primer was black as usual but had they not already been primed I would have used a black brown mix. I think these guys were Anvilrage or Dark fire. As I have previously explained when I joined it was the end of the previous edition and there were very few plastics to be had anywhere in the UK so 3d it was.

I wanted the camo to match the base obviously so sprayed the cloak with Vallejo Mahogany and then passed over a couple of times with increasing amounts of Orange Brown. I paint my bases using a 5L emulsion from a DIY shop so there is no exact match available!

Once the basic shading was done to match the base I sprayed on patches of yellow ochre and sand on with an effort made to have them roughly touching but leaving plenty of the brown showing through. It was tempting to add a dark olive patch effect as well but as i am painting a number of these guys and adding another colour would increase the painting of dots down the road I left it.

The first dot pattern was roughly drawn from my idea of German SS WW2 peadot camo. Each area of dots comprised 6 dark brown dots with some of them touching and a few close but not touching. I placed these onthe lightest areas for the most part. Once these were done I popped a few random dots elsewhere. All were painted with a size 4 brush with a decent but not super sharp point. I wanted a bit of irregularity.

The next dots were done in the same manner but using Iraqi sand and placed in the brown areas. The hood required smaller dots in tighter patterns to maintain the illusion. Once again some randomer sandy dots escaped the pattern to appear near the randam dark brown free dots

To add depth i then glazed in several layers of dark brown into the creases. This stops the whole thing looking a bit flat due to the airbrushing. I imagine any thin wash would do the trick but this way the light areas stay light rather than everything going darker with a wash.

The none camo areas were then painted flat earth as a base colour. There needs to be areas not in camo for the camo to stand out as camo. I was going to use a USA choc chip on the weapon but decided it would confuse the whole thing.

The sniper rifle was painted in Old Wood as the base colour trying to leave the darker colour in the recesses.

Sand was added to the old wood mix to highlight most of the gun and then edge highlighted in pure sand as seen below.

The backpackhad splodgy shapes added first in flat earth and then in sand. This was deliberately a different pattern as it is quite a big shape. The edges were highlighted in sand.

The non camo parts were now layered with flat earth mixed with sand 50/50 and then the edges again picked out in sand. The visor was painted Orange but at the time of writing is insufficent so will be hyped up before the final photos!!

As mentioned 99% of my basing is done on the cheap using sharp or builders sand bought in big bags over PVA and then varnished to fix before painting in DIY brown (terracotta or earth colour?). This is then drybrushed Desert Yellow and Dark Sand