Hi, and welcome to my simple rust tutorial. I've been using the same version of this almost unaltered for the past 10 years, only updating here and there when I can afford newer tools or find ways to cut corners for the same effect in a decreased time period. It works for vehicles, metal buidlings, powered armour and whatever you can think of that needs to be worn and rusted.
You don't need many things to do this. Here is the shortlist of items needed.
- A model that needs to be weathered.
- Brown paint (I use Vallejo Flat Brown)
- Piece of foam (any sort of foam seems to work, from blisters to upholstery and anything in between)
- Matte and Gloss varnish (preferably fast drying, I use Vallejo Polyurethane Gloss Varnish (water based) and Daler Rowney Soluble Matt Varnish (thinner based) Both I can work with after 1 hour of drying.)
- Brushes
- Kitchen towel paper
- Mig AMMO Streaking Grime (enamel)
- White Spirit
- And a little enthusiasm. Don't be afraid to do anything wrong. You are working on something that is most likely already a wreck so I doubt anyone will spot any errors!
Ok, let's start. Assemble, prime and basecoat your model. I find that for rust weathering, a light colour like grey/white seems to work best as the contrast is bigger.
Put some brown paint on your palette and rip off a piece e of foam.
Depending on the effect you are after, dab the foam on some kitchen paper to release excess paint. If you do not dab at all but go straight for the model, the splotches will be bigger, darker and taller, and if you dab more they will be much smaller, softer and flatter. I use the terms taller and flatter as when the paint dries you can actually feel the texture you are creating. This is good and adds to the realism!
The foam can be held in your hand, bending it a bit to make a rounded curved bit, or held with tweezers (the latter will keep your fingrettips clean)
Now dab the foam onto the model.
Repeat
And repeat. If you dab fast, the surface will be flat and relatively smooth, if you dab, hold, dab again, hold again, you give the paint some time to dry and create texture.
And repeat some more. Play with the foam pad. When the paint starts to dry you will notice the spots becoming less and less pronounced. You can now try and push the pad down and drag it a bit around. This creates a very soft rust pattern, almost dustlike.
It really helps if you gathered examples of rusted vehicles that you'd like to copy, and rust accordingly.
So repeat and repeat, start out with fresh paint and keep working the pad till it is almost dry.
If you look at the roof, I just dragged the almost dry pad back and forth for that effect.
Weather more heavily at logical locations, parts of the object that get used more. Or if part of it has burned in the past.
Work your way around the object untill you are satisfied it is rusted enough. You will notice that the pad does not reach in certain areas.
This is not a problem, keep weathering untill you done everything you want to use the pad for.
Take some brown paint and add it in all of the valleys the foam pad could not reach. No need to be neat. Neat is bad. Or don't paint in the areas, that is up to you. Look at what would be realistic. A desert wreck is different from a more temperate climate. Then again don't overengineer it, it will take you more time and I make these scenic pieces in under 2 hours total (excluding drying times), doing them on the side of a regular project. In theory I could do a whole fleet of these in a weekend. If I was 16 again and had no wife, kids and social events
Now, since I am weathering a classic model car, these tend to have lots of Chrome. Chrome is pretty resilient and that old stuff doens't rust nearly as fast as the surrounding bodywork. So I paint it seperate. Also paint the windows black while you are at it.
I then paint everything aluminium.
Get out a new bit of sponge if the old one has dried up and repeat the weathering process on the "chrome".
Then get the Mig AMMO Streaking Grime and apply on parts you want to either filter the tone down one or to notches, or to use as grime streaking along the bodywork. Leave to dry for a few minutes. Again, don't be neat.
Grab your white spirit, dampen the brush (I tend to just drown the poor thing) and hit the Streaking Grime spots and wether them in a downward stroke. If the colour of the panel you are working on goes too dark, clean the brush and go over it with fresh White Spirit, this will lighten it a lot. Repeat till your object is done.
Leave it to dry. I tend to leave it overnight to make sure it has dried enough. Then glosscoat it with a water based varnish....don't use a thinner based one or you'll ruin your weathering cause it will react with what you did the previous evening. Paint in black areas for the lights so you can have a very thin line seperating the chrome and the coloured bits (you can of course do that before glosscoating, but hey, each his own)
Paint the lights in the desired colours, and go over the windows again.
Paint the base in your normal fashion and glosscoat that and the newly painted areas. Leave to dry. Paint over with Matte varnish.
Add your favourite bits for setting a scene. Flock, tufts and in this case small printed bits of newspaper.
You could gloss varnish the windows again, but as these are old wrecks I prefer the black to be flat as if there was no glass.
And that is it. Less then 2 hours of work, spread over 2 nights and one afternoon when my kids were asleep, easy to do in between browsing your favourite forum or in between binging Netflix. No difficult techniques, no specialty stuff, no high cost, just a bit of time and effort nets you a nice and fast painted scenic piece for the gaming table.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, the car is a plastic 1/55 Cars car, namely Doc Hudson, which can be had cheaply for roughly 2 euros. I think they work fine with 28mm miniatures provided your troops are not wearing GW style concrete plinths but something more subtle in the 2mm thickness range.
Let me know what you think of it, any and all input is appreciated. Consider this my Christmas gift for you all. Happy painting!
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April 25, 2025, 04:26:09 AM
March 28, 2012, 03:23:04 PM