Planning for the armor!

I experimented over the weekend with a camouflage scheme for the regiment's tanks.  I used a pretty vanilla Badger airbrush to lay down a Vallejo Model Air Black Gray over a flat black primer.  Once this was dry I painted irregular diagonal stripes using Army Painter Uniform Gray. This is the same color I user to prime the infantry models and also becomes the base color of the DKoK great coats.  I'm hoping this will time the infantry and armor together as a cohesive force.

Here are a couple shots of the 2nd platoon command chimera with a base coat and camouflage.

Experimenting with the airbrush, I painted variable width irregular stripes in a diagonal pattern up one side of the tank, over the top, and then back down the other side.  I also two Leman Russ variants. One is shown below:

 

I definitely recommend an airbrush for painting armor.  It's quick, doesn't suffer from brush strokes, and provides good control for applying camouflage patterns that use a scheme where colors fade into each other.  I chose this approach to avoid a time consuming masking process to apply a more defined pattern.  As it was, masking the tank treads took enough time!  It was worth it to keep the base black; making it easier to apply the tread colors later without any re-basing.

I built a couple extra turrets to help customize the force against various Xenos foes.

 

The next step would be to cover the tanks with Army Painter Quick Shade Dark Tone to blend it all together and provide the shadows and definition for the surface details.  This will then be highlighted to establish the final base colors for the tanks before the remaining non-camouflaged details are painted and weathering is applied.

This has been a fun experiment and I love the results.  I'll complete the three vehicles I'm begun and then decide whether to mix things up among the various tanks in the army, or stick with this as the mandated scheme across the force.  It was easy enough to do that I feel I could consistently apply it across the many armored units I have at my disposal, so we'll see.

Stay tuned for more and happy painting!