Ok, so you want to paint camo. Here's my tutorial on how I did it. (Please note, the paintjob itself was a quick job. I didn't prep the item very well, I didn't wait nearly long enough for the paint layers to dry, and I didn't use enough stencils on the different layers. For a finished product, it's not so great. For an idea of how to actually do it, it works great).
First, gather your materials:
Reference stencils/patterns, ruler, Xacto knife, scissors,self-healing cutting board, wax paper, painter's tape, silver sharpie. Now, the Xacto, cutting board, and ruler aren't necessary for positive stencils. For negative stencils, the knife and the board are necessities. Rulers are just always handy.
Measure out a length of wax paper.
Using wax paper is trick to double your stencils, and makes it handy to store the stencils once they are shaped.
Start adding stripes of OVERLAPPING painter's tape to the wax paper. The overlap needs to be at least 1/4".
Cover the entire bit of wax paper with overlapping layers of painter's tape.
THIS is the clever bit. Are you ready for the clever bit? (Kudos to whoever knows where that quote is from).
Flip it over.
Overlap layers of painter's tape on this side as well.
Once it full covered, trim the edges, and using the references as a guide, starting drawing shapes on the tape. Now, I use a silver sharpie cause it stays on well and easy to see. You can use whatever marking devices you want.
Cover the whole thing with shapes. The size of the shapes will depend on what type of camo pattern you are shooting for, and how large the item is.
Grab your scissors and start cutting out shapes. SAVE THE EDGES. The little bit of edge left can be used if you need some small shapes, spots, etc.
The stencils you will now have are double sided and mirrored, obviously. The wax paper will allow you to peel them off like stickers, and use them on whatever you want to stencil.
Take your object to be camofied (I don't think that is a real word) and put your base colour on.
Add stencils. You can rotate or cut the stencils as you need. Even though you have 2 of everyone, by alternating its position and layer, you won't be able to tell it's the same shape.
How many stencils and how big they are depends on the look you want. I was doing this more as a test/example, so I wasn't too picky. I made the dark brown layer fairly prominent.
Add your next layer of colour.
Add more stencils. Again, how many and how large depends on the effect you want. I decided to make the light green more spotty and seem more like highlights. Don't be afraid to overlap the stencils either.
The next layer was dark green. I forgot to grab a picture, but it's not much to see. Once that is dry, I peeled all of the stencils off. I really should have had a fourth colour layer. It's pretty plain camo and there are not enough shapes, but you get the idea for the tutorial.
You can see how the tape pulled off some of the paint. It's because I didn't do a great job of sanding the box (and that sterlite plastic doesn't hold paint very either). As I said, for the purposes of a tutorial, there you go.
Charlie
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