Camo Mask Paint?

[tooslow]

If flaking is your concern, then go to your local hobby shop and look at the Pactra brand paints. These are formulated for use on the flexible plastic bodies of R/C cars and trucks. They will take more abuse than regular model paints. You should have no problems finding military/camo colors. If you do, then try www.towerhobbies.com. They will have what you are looking for.

[Snappy]

I've had to camo my face a few times for ROTC, and they always say dark colors on high places (like nose, cheek, forehead, chin) and light everywhere else. It's a pain getting it out of your ears, and if you're like me they tell you to put it on your teeth.

[dawump]

Well I've done it, and here is what I have learned. Firstly, it is correct that the Polyeurethane paints designed to paint R/C cars would be perfect, but these arn't easily available ( if at all ) in colors other than you would expect to see on R/C cars - metallics and brights.

Acrylic paints however are very easy to color match as they are mostly used for war type model painting. I was advised that the brand "Polly Scale" would be better for this application, than the regular brands like Tamiya.

I'm fairly lucky in that the Proteus isn't very flexible anyway, so I should beable to get away with it.

The first thing I did was get some plastic and practice and find a method that worked. The first couple of attempts looked terrible, so I advise a practice for sure. You can always paint over stuff but the thicker it gets the more likely it is that it will crack.

What I found worked best for me was this:

1) Sand the entire surface of the mask that is to be painted with 220 grit. This roughens the surface and should help the paint to stick.

2) I covered the whole thing in German 73 green, which is an oily mud color. To apply I used the edge of a sponge, dipped it in paint then dabbed off most of the paint before applying to the mask. This took several goes over, each time with just a very thin coat ( almost nothing left on the sponge ) before the mask ended up a flat dark grey color. Already this mask would be better on the field.

3) I allowed this to dry for two hours.

4) I took a 3" by 1/2" piece of sponge and prepared two paints, "Olive Drab" and "Panzer Olive Green". I dipped one end of the sponge in one, and the other end in the other. I worked my way across the mask creating colored areas and lines but leaving some areas untouched, so that the first coat also had some presense. I worked faster this time with a little more paint so that where they met they would "merge" rather than have strong borders between the colors.

5) I let that dry then took a lighter brown "Olive Drab 22" and created a couple of highlights along previously created shapes, and applied some more of the green along the edge of some of the green areas to create a highlight.

If I was doing it again, I would probably leave more of the original oily mud color showing through, but where I play it is very dry, and I play successfully in old Vietnam greens rather than camo and it works well. The mask matches that.

I might redo the visor with some more dark because it isn't as well done as the mask ( I did the visor first ). Now 24 hours later it doesn't crack when I bend it, but can be scraped off easily enough, which I'm sure will happen in the woods resulting in black lines.. No big deal. I'm going to leave it out in the sun today to see if it will "cure" any.

Overall, I'm very happy with the result. It looks great up close, although from a distance the range of colors don't show up.. it is more like an olive mask - which is also fine.

Here is a picture, but my digicam is really aweful so definition is very unclear.



Thanks to all for the info, and a special thanks to the guys who suggested that the best way to camo my black mask was to sell it and buy a black mask of a different brand ;-)

Keith

[MikeCouves]

Wow!! Man that's a really good job, you really thought about this! Now, I had a BRIGHT RED JT IZE, and it gave me away in seconds. So I bought some Goggle-Flauge...that fixed the problems. Now I have to get some Lens Skins that are camo...hehe. I love being invisible .

[dawump]

I'm hot blooded and wondered if goggle-flage would further restrict air flow.. Also, I wondered how easy it would be to clean paint off in between games.

If you get hit does it not become a sticky mess and hinder air flow even more?

Or perhaps you never get hit ;-)

Keith