Thursday, May 15, 2014

Basic weathering test

Hi everybody!

Today I want to share with you a step-by-step weathering project I did a little while ago.

For this, I used a 1:32 scale oil drum by Tamiya. They come in a kit with oil drums, jerrycans and buckets. These are great for scenery or display bases but are also great to practice some weathering on!

If you want to reproduce what I did here, you are going to need the following:
To start with, you need to prime your model and paint it in a nice rust color. You can use different browns, oranges and red to create a nice natural effect. For inspiration you can take a look at pictures of rust to get a good reference of what your going for. Accept for paints you can also use pigments this step to get a nice textured look. Don't put too much effort into it, its gonna get covered up.


Once you are happy with the result, kind of like the picture above, give it a thin coat of gloss or satin varnish. This will protect your progress up to now. When the varnish is dry, spray several thin layers of chipping fluid (or if you can't get this, you can try and use hairspray) and give it like 5 minutes to dry. Then you can paint the model in the color you want to. If you use very thin layers you can use multiple colors to achieve some sort of color modulation or camouflage.


Once the paint is dry to touch get an old brush and some lukewarm water. Dip the brush in the water and stab at the model where you want to chip the paint. make sure to hit the edges as those are the most likely to be damaged.


Don't over do the effect. Chipping is only one stage of weathering so try to pace yourself. For destroyed or abandoned vehicles you can go overboard if you want to, but that is a whole different way of painting and weathering. Once you are satisfied with the amount of chipping you can spray a thin layer of gloss or satin varnish to protect your work and to make sure the chipping fluid won't ruin the effect you achieved so far.

Last but certainly not least, is the streaking and staining.
For this I used pigments and streaking effects but you can also use oil paints instead. Start with streaking. Make little streaks from chips leading down or from places where water would run down. If you are using oil paints you make little dots. You can use different colors  to create a bit of variation. Then take a medium sized, flat, synthetic brush and dampen it using white spirits or (h)odorless thinner. (Game of Thrones joke there, sorry) and drag the lines or dots out and fade them out towards the end. The varnish you sprayed on the model at the end of the previous step protects your paint against the thinner, which can strip your model clean of paint.
Once your streaks are done and dry we can proceed to the pigments. There are several ways to use these but what I did was to make a wash by adding some pigments to water, applying it to the model and later cleaning it with water. That way it will sit nicely in the recesses and it will give a nice effect.


Here you see the finished product. The different colors in the rust give the impression of old and new rust and the overall look has a nice aged finish. 

I hope this step-by-step has helped you in any way. There are many ways to do this so feel free to experiment but this gives you a nice impression of how I achieve this effect.

As always, thank you for reading.  

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