Need help with German camo

As the doog said it is used as a helpful way to see what you're painting, but a base coat of one color or another is also helpful if you paint in transparent layers like I do.  What taht menas is there are some cases where I want a certain amount of depth from a color and it is achieved by layering thinned down coats over a base coat.  For instance you'd see this more done with autromobiles or automobile models.  A candy color of red would turn our bright if laid over silver, light if over white, rich if over gold and dark if over black.  The red you started with looks very much different when you're done.  I always use this thechnique when paint anything that's supposed to be leather.  It makes the piece feel soft. 

JigSawMan

I hit mine with primer while still on the sprue then, depending on the position of the arms I paint some before gluing together.

I use Tamiya flesh {this is NOT the way, but until I get better with painting them, that is what I will use} I find that it covers poorly over either raw plastic OR primed. I am going to hit the next batch with an air brush for the flesh, then tape up the hands and face and hit the uniforms THEN try to do some finish colors like eyes, shoulder tabs etc.

 having thrown my method out I suspect it will be picked apart as it does not lead to the type of GOOD work that is seen here { hope it will lead to a nice tutorial }

That's just so you can see where you need to paint,(to cover all the white) and to provide a base underneath to help give the overcoat a proper base coat, because the base can affect the way the paint looks when you paint it the correct color.

I never worry about that--paint it right out of the bottle onto the plastic. But if you're still unsure, do some more research until you're convinced what you're doing is correct, and then double-check even yet then.  

Ok thank you. I also read in the book How to Model German Armor that you can paint the figure plain white besides his hands and head. You let it dry then you paint oer that. Does that work. I just did that but i was wondering if anyone here has done it before.

no, use field gray.