"Quick way to paint MarPat needed" Topic

I am stuck and need assistance: I have committed to running a Force On Force game in 15 days and I need to get roughly 21 US Marines painted in woodlands MarPat to an acceptable standard. (Along with 24 Russians) This equates to 25 to 30 hours of painting time if all goes well. I started on my Marines using black gesso to prime and then followed a tutorial recommended here previously and that was a complete disaster. Three evenings of painting wasted for three figures on a method whose results did not look right in my opinion. Granted I am not a skilled painter but I can keep my colors in the lines. I am now starting over from scratch and I need to find a quick easy way to paint my Marines so they look passable spend no more than 30 minutes a figure. I should mention most of the players will be active duty Marines so the know what MarPat looks like. And did I mention quick and easy? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Not MarPat but British MTP so take it or leave it – in 28mm it's probably close enough. This is mostly Games Workshop paints but, of course, that isn't critical, and some of the finer detail may be slightly different.

(i) GW Death World Forest (all over) – this is a base colour so it needs to be thinned;

(ii) GW Graveyard Earth (now Steel Legion Drab) – large blotches overall;

(iii) Foundry Phlegm Green 28B – blotches overall;

(iv) GW Catechan Green (now Castellan Green) – fine squiggles all over;

(v) GW Scorched Brown (now Rhinox Hide) – squiggles all over;

(vi) GW Bleached Bone (now Ushabti Bone) – fine squiggles all over, with sort of a big one and a little one in pairs but not quite; and

(vii) the whole thing then gets a thin wash of GW Athalon Camoshade.

Good luck with it.

I have never tried to do much of anything like this, but if I had to…

I will assume you already have the paint colors chosen and on hand.

Try this with 1-3 figs and see how it plays. If it sucks, I was wrong and move on.

FORGET using a brush. It'll never work. Full strength paint won't look right. Dry brushing won't look right.

Sidenote: (I would not have started with black primer, but, well, that ship has sailed.)

Paint the figs the light brown overall.

Get several pieces of the foam that you find protecting figs in blister packs. Paint an expendable surface in the light brown color. Experiment with several of the foam pieces to see which seems to work best, using a BLOT technique.

BLOT the darker green overall. Let dry.
BLOT the lighter green overall. Let dry.
BLOT the black overall. Let dry. Don't use straight black. Use a super dark gray. Wally World Pavement is a good choice.

Be patient with the foam. You'll tend to use differing pressure, and get differing levels of paint on the foam as the process progresses, (especially as you're in a hurry,) and the last figure won't look much like the first if you're not being careful/mindful.

Don't sweat being messy. You'll have to overpaint the weapons, kit and flesh anyway.

This WON'T be easy, but if you can BLOT consistently, it could prove to be fairly fast.

It's how I'd try it.

Good luck…

Better you than me.

Oops, forgot. When you try blotting, use the ends of the foam, not the broad flat.

What scale are your miniatures? 30-40 minutes each seems rather too much, and that is from someone who really enjoys painting 25mm miniatures.

I likewise would not have gone with black gesso primer, but it is what it is.

Next I would spray paint the base color for each force. Spray a light coat, let it dry, lay the figures on their sides, spray again so that get the surfaces you missed, let dry again, adjust the subjects again to expose other surfaces, and paint the last base coat.

You can get all of them base-coated in an hour or so. Run two painting tables, so that when you finish one, you can turn to the other.

The sponge technique recommended by KPinder should work well. The best sponges are probably white cosmetic sponges that you get from the dollar store (or, better, the Japanese hundred-yen stores Daiso and Ichiban Kan). The advantage of those sponges is the small scale of their sponge texture. They are not actually sponges, of course, but some kind of artificial foam.

KPinder's idea to use foam from blister packs is good, too, but the texture is a little bigger.

Good luck. Post pictures!

Run two painting tables, so that when you finish one, you can turn to the other.

I meant to say, "Run two painting tables, so that when you finish one coat on one force, you can turn to the other." That is, set yourself up to alternate spray-painting your base coats.

+1, +1 Oberlindes, esp. about posting pix. I'd very much like to see the results.

At any distance over about 50 feet, MARPAT turns into a indistinct greenish-brownish blob.

You really could get away with painting the Marines all one color (Olive Drab? VMC Brown-Violet?) And then paint their webgear Coyote Tan (khaki).

@Lion in the Stars: Well, of course it does, but surely the players will be getting down on their knees to see the troops'-eye view of things now and then, and it will be nice for them to see the MARPAT and Излом camouflage!