Rapidish Rauchtarnmuster
I recently had a commission to paint some SS infantry wearing the rarely painted Rauchtarnmuster camouflage, sometimes known as smokey or blurred edge camo. It is a version of the much more common plane tree camo which i painted a version of here.... https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/2019/11/12/how-i-paint-waffen-ss-oak-leaf-camouflage-and-pea-dot
However the difference is basically the blurry edge of Rauchtarnmuster - not easy in 28mm and therefore as always with camo we are looking for an impression rather than a perfect representation. As I have also said before painting a camo in 28mm is actually reverse logic as for it to appear as camo it has to stand out!
So this is a sample and from this we can see its a light green base with light brown blotches and heavily overprinted with a dark green almost black. From this then you can imagine any realistic version in 28mm would be virtually black with some lighter dots. It does give us a guide though and shows that there has to be a dominant dark green pattern over the other colours and that any dots poking through need to be the colour below ie light green or brow.
For this demo I am using an old spare figure and have put down a black base. The colours are all Vallejo Model Colour and are from the German Camouflage section but to be honest I have no idea if these are actually accurate, however they are the best we have.
First up is a base of Luftwaffe Green which is no part of the camo but is a solid shadow base.
This was then sprayed with German Camo bright Green with an emphasis on the upper areas.
Next patches of German camo pale brown were sprayed on. When doing this I always try to carry patches either side of any straps/belts but to end at sleeves or on the collar to give an impression of different pieces of material. If you look closely you can see a patch on the collar and a patch finishing at the top of the left arm.
I have experimented with other browns but come back to this one as it gives a subtler finish.
Then using German Camo EXTRA dark green i sprayed small patches on the same principle. Here the temptation is to do larger patches because there is more dark green in the original...This does not work - tried it, didnt like it.
Dots. If you had all the time in the world you could do a more realistic pattern with the dark green but for our purposes dots will do the job and you need to pop them all over the visible light green and pale brown, If you look at the original the size we are after is variable so dont get hung up on identical dot size. By now you will see the overall tone darkening which is why it is a bad idea to have too many dark green spray patches initially.
Next its dots of the light green. These go onto the dark patches but only where the dark patches border light green as if they are showing through the dark green overprint.
Do the same with the pale brown, dotting onto the dark green only where it butts up against the pale brown. The GOLDEN RULE here is not to put pale brown dots on light green or light green on pale brown. If you do it rapidly becomes like a weird variation of Pea Dot camo...
And thats it in a nutshell. Below you can see a 'finished figure' as i slapped on the other colours just to give a finished look and show the camo in context.
Hopefully this might be of some use if you are faced with hordes of SS to paint and want to mix in a few Rauchtarnmuster. Its a good looking camo and on some figures can be combined with different helmet cover camo and trousers. For a more faded version you could swap out the EXTRA dark green and replace with the normal German cam Dark Green.