Camouflage Project

So I decided to try my hand at a camouflage finish for a weapon. Being nervous but smart, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to try it on a real gun without some practice. So I painted my paintball gun.

I originally wanted a simple scheme that would make it a little easier to conceal when playing in the woods. I started by disassembling it and taping off any areas like the barrel and trigger where I didn't want any paint to get. Then I gave it a couple of base coats of ultra flat khaki Krylon spray paint. Then having breathed too many fumes I decided that I would attempt to give it a "digitalized" paint scheme. I only had three colors to work with, all from Krylon: khaki, and a fairly dark green and brown. Some more intermediate colors like coyote brown, olive drab or foliage green would have been nice, but you have to work with what you have. After the base coat, I took out the painters tape and began to cut and place pieces of tape to start the design. It ended up like this:



One thing it is hard to keep in mind with this is that the parts you are taping off will be the base color and the parts currently visible will be the next color in the design. It is usually best to base coat with your lightest color, then use the next lightest and the darkest color last. Also, use the darkest color very sparingly.

This is the result of the masking and green paint. It is okay, but I thought that adding the brown would give it a little more depth. So, more hours of cutting and placing little pieces of tape.


This is the main receiver just prior to getting the last coat of paint. Note that there are more places taped off, as I want less brown than green or tan. Also, it is important to make sure that your third color overlaps both earlier colors. I also tried to keep the lines uneven and to leave little islands of each color surrounded by the others to help the shape breaking up effect. This will help to give the design some depth.


This is the final result. I am fairly pleased with it. It isn't as bad as I feared or as good as I might have hoped. I do think it came out a little too "busy" but I think it is not too bad for a first try. If I did another, (which I certainly would not) I would try to make the various colored areas larger and more blob-like and less line-like. That would make it more like the real digital patterns like CADPAT and MARPAT.

In case anyone is curious, the paintball gun is a Spyder EMR-1. If you choose to do something similar, heed my warning: this takes a lot of time. Too much really. You can get just as good an effect with a couple of stencils and instead of spending hours of time, get it done in minutes- minus the drying time. Let me know what you think, I will moderate the comments so that it looks like everyone loves it anyway. :)