I’ve finally, actually painted some camouflage in the way you’d expect, basecoating, shading and then highlighting each colour, and I think the results are pretty good:
While I do rather like this result, it can be time consuming, and it’s not how I’ve approached camouflage in the past. My usual method has been to basecoat, shade and then highlight all with a single colour, usually bone, and that’s served me well enough, especially with vehicles.
My Turan 2 and Csaba were painted in such a way. It’s a fast way of getting the camouflage effect, however it does desaturate all of your colours when you drybrush the entire model with bone.
There are of course contrast paints, and that’s a third method. A while back I attempted a Space Marine Reiver Kill Team in the Executioner’s original colour scheme:
You could slap chop the camo, or as above just paint it straight over white primer depending on your preferred look.
I think representing camo presents you with a painting paradox. The point of camo is to break up the silhouette of whatever it’s on, however when you paint a model your job is often to accentuate the silhouette of that model. Edge highlighting as a technique is a perfect example of that. So… how do you know if you’ve done a good job of representing camo on a model, because if the model clearly depicted it’s not a good representation of camo, but if the model is not clearly depicted it’s going to look like a bad paint job… so how do you paint camo?
Here are some of my finished robots anyway:
I had intended to go from my previous leopard print scheme to something easier to paint, but I really didn’t… oh well!
Deathzap 
The intriguing thing with 40K is there is a combination of bright colors and camo. Te first Space marine I ever painted I did in camo. However, the 40K premise is that the armor is so good they don’t need camo and can just show off their chapter colors of blues, reds, yellows etc. However, the lowly Imperial Guard, in most cases, still resort to camo.
As far as camo designs I have used WW1 spackle as a basis as it can include some primary colors. I have also used animal ‘camo’, which is sometimes, ironically more colorful. I did my Space Ork commandos in tiger and zebra pattern colors.
As someone who has three power armoured armies I wish their armour in the game was that good!
I like to tear up fabric, wrap the model appropriately to create the desired pattern then spray. I don’t have an airbrush and don’t go into massive detail on my models but the effect is good as the edges aren’t too crisp.
I’m planning to do something similar for polystyrene planets as I get more deeply into Void Admiral.
Sounds great! I’ve done the sticky tac and spray cans trick before.
That’s quite a complicated scheme, certainly breaks up the models silhouette. They looks great!
Thanks very much! It certainly works as camo, although you know the true test is not finding all of your minis when you pack up at the end of the battle.