Painting the Tartan Armed Forces???

[MacWage]

I believe this qualifies as off-topic, unless it needs to be moved to tartan.


A project I am working on is a Tartan Army, Tartan Navy, and Tartan Air Force. Essentially, it is tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters, ships, and planes painted in various tartans. The idea come to me in discussions with a WW2 war gamer (they build model armies and refight battles from WW2), who was building the Italians.

Now, HOW IN THE HECK DO I PAINT TARTAN ON A COMPLEX SMALL SURFACE????????? (like a tank or a plane)



ANY IDEAS?????


If possible, I would like to have real tartans. The plan is one tartan per unit (of which I will probably build models of only one of 2 of any given unit for a diorama or 2).

Visualize:
a diorama of 2 planes in matching tartan and a third of another tartan and type, while on the edge is a tank in tartan. All the men are in tartan kilts, in 1/48 scale. For the kilts, I will use putty (or the white glue and tissue paper trick) and tartan decals wrapped around a "normal" military figure.

I have not yet decided on an era, though an early WW2 seems logical (ala Blackhawk and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), though a 50s or 60s one may work too. I might even do a modern one, imagine a tartan AV-8B Harrier and an A-10 (or Tornado) alongside a tartan Abrams (or Brit tank)!!!

OR is this idea just STUPID???

[Riverkilt]

Don't know if it would work for what you're doing, but I have some cast iron bagpipers (2 1/2" tall) that I've had since boyhood (1950). Back then they painted a base color, like dark green, then made a few representative strokes over that to represent the tartan..in this case a yellow stroke, painted over with a thinner black stroke horizontally and a couple red strokes vertically. Gives the effect of a tartan.

Ron

[neo71665]

I don't know if it will help or not but back when I used to do model cars I used to make custom decals useing a computer printer. They (I don't remember the brand) makes a water slide decal blank that you can use your printer to make whatever you want. I can try to dig through some of my old model car mags and see if I can find a company if you like.

[tp_magill]

We used this technique for large-scale work on stage, but it might work here, too.

Print the tartan on transparencies, then project it onto the surface. Carefully "color within the lines" to complete the design.

This will work best if the model will mostly be seen from one angle and/ or one distance.

[Rampant Lion]

This is totally not a topic that I know anything about, but I think that I might have come up with some ideas. I remember when I was younger I was given a pewter (I believe) figurine of a scotsman in a kilt that was about 1.5 to 2" tall. It came with a bottle of William Grant's scotch (my name being William Grant I thought this was very cool). Anyway, I believe the tartan was simplified version of a real tartan, probably due to the accuracy one can get on such a small item.

I think if you decided on simpler tartans for your items you might be able to simplify them even more, maybe kinda like what a tartan would look like seen from a distance. Now hopefully this will be a good example of what I mean. If you look at this MacIan painting, it's a representation of the Grant tartan, but obviously doesn't have the detail of the Tartan.




And the Grant Tartan



Now I want to call my parents to see if that figurine is still around. It'll have to wait until tomorrow.

[auld argonian]

Just stumbled on this web page:

http://www.angelfire.com/tx/ToySoldier/tartan.htm

...thought it might be apropo but it is pretty cool whether it solves your immediate problem or not. The methodology makes sense for painting any tartann.

Best

AA

[MacWage]

Just stumbled on this web page:

http://www.angelfire.com/tx/ToySoldier/tartan.htm

...thought it might be apropo but it is pretty cool whether it solves your immediate problem or not. The methodology makes sense for painting any tartann.

Best

AA

THANKS!!!!

I came across that once before (on this site I think), but could not seem to locate it again and had NO IDEA of what the key words would be ("tartan" gave WAY too many results :rolleyes: ).

By the way, his soldiers are 1/32 scale.