The Wargamers' Forum

On another thread the subject of paint German three colour camo schemes without an airbrush came up. I recalled a guy at my old modelling club used to use art water colour pencils, this was some 40+ years ago before the days of cheap airbrushes and compressors.
It triggered me to have a go.
The pics show a lash upped Stug III given a very quick job with Derwent and Caran D Arche pencils, a brush and water and a silicone tipped brush. Now it needs sealing with varnish and the pin washes added. Will be interesting to see what it ends up looking like.
L

Water colour pencils, great idea!

Another trick is to use conte chalks, conte pencils or pigments. Pencils you can sharpen and draw directly on the model. Then use a smudge (a paper tool for smudging contes and chalks for drawing) to feather out the edges. Conte chalks can be ground up in a mortar and applied directly with a smudge by dipping the tip of the smudge in the powder, then applying it to the model. The same method can be used with pigments. You can get contes, chalks, smudges and pigments all at your local art store. Similarly, you can use this stuff as a cheap alternative to the pigments and weathering products from the hobby store. These can be applied with brushes, makeup applicators, God knows what else.



Here's an example of the smudge and ground up powder application.





...and the final product.





Cheap. Easy. Only one word of warning, one has to seal these in with a varnish. I usually do a gloss coat for washes and decals, then a matt varnish. This will make your pigments DARKER. Always go a little lighter than the desired colour. Note the browns and greens I used at the beginning and how they ended up.

Excellent Ryan
Have you seen/used water brushes? https://www.cultpens.com/i/q/DW48913/de ... h-set-of-3
Look interesting for both of the techniques.
Like the winter look particularly, use chalks for that myself in 35th scale.
L

Adler wrote: ↑Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:00 pm Excellent Ryan
Have you seen/used water brushes? https://www.cultpens.com/i/q/DW48913/de ... h-set-of-3
Look interesting for both of the techniques.
Like the winter look particularly, use chalks for that myself in 35th scale.
L

No, but they look promising. Art supply stores are the bomb, so much stuff we can use. Usually it's cheaper too. For example, I bought an entire bottle of Golden Acrylic Extender for about $10 Canadian. It works great with Valejo and like paints. A little Valejo bottle of extender that's about 1/10th of the size is $4.

Really like the effect you have there, thank for sharing....

Interesting

Thanks for the information. I will have to look for them the next time I am in Red Deer......



Cheers
Larry

That looks awesome, might be about to abandon my airbrush......

Then there's this:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjTS1l_GWdQ

...I haven't yet tried it but it looks simple and effective and uses no strange tools/colors/substances I would have to go and obtain from some esoteric source such as an arts store.

Loving this thread. Very useful stuff for those of us who do not have an airbrush...

Very handy ,even though i have a good AB,i still like hand painting some models.