Weathering & Paint Techniques - Acrylic and Airbrush

[Glenderg]

Since there was a fair bit of discussion regarding weathering and so on, I thought I'd post up a few images of simple techniques that can be achieved using an airbrush and an offcut of some pipe. On the off-chance that they can't be weathered to our satisfaction, I thought it would be worth experimenting for an hour this afternoon.

 

The wagon itself has multiple layers of colouring, cement, road dirt, you name it.

 

 

What Ivory is left visible, has turned a pale sand colour, and there is a general mix of road dirt and cement wash on the bottom half, caked, speckled, and peeled cement layers of varying tones on the upper level, all split by a nice tide mark in the middle.

 

First technique is the rock salt method of masking. The surface is coated with water with a drop of washing up liquid to break the surface tension. Onto that is sprinkled rock salt, but I've used herb salt. The salt and water combine in 2 or 3 minutes, and stick to the surface.

 

 

After a light coating of grey paint, which is hit with the hairdryer for speed, the salt is brushed off leaveing a speckled mottled effect.

 

 

The larger rocksalt particles work great to get big patches of exposed rust versus paint.

 

Wire Wool Technique

 

A light coat of olive drab is sprayed onto the test pipe.

 

 

As soon as the shine of drying paint has left, I've just lightly wiped in a downward fashion with 0000 wire wool.

 

 

This method can be very effective at blending different layers of streaky muck together.

 

Water Masking Technique

 

This was an accidental find, but if you see the tidal mark on the cement bubble, there's almost a sharp change in colouring between the road dirt and pale sand colour, and the edges feather nicely. I've just brushed a little water onto the area I want to mask, and waited until it started to dry off.

 

 

I've sprayed on a light coating of dirt, and the water leaves a nice soft edge between the two layers. I've just wiped the water mask off, and it's left some nice streak effects.

 

 

This method is about exposing various levels of paint.

 

Apply base coat -

 

 

Apply top coat and using Nail varnish remover on a gummed up brush I gently agitated the surface to the get the lower effect. The upper one was a mess.

 

 

This technique can create some weird results - apply a thin coat of PVA to the surface, and immediately paint with a coat of whatever. As soon as coverage is complete, give it a blast with a hairdryer. The two materials dry at different rates and provide the effect below. Heavier paint produces heavier cracking, a lighter spray gives more yet thinner.

 

 

I peeled away a bit of the glue to see if it would replicate the peeling cement layer, but it's not great.

 

 

I've gave it another light coat of glue, and some grey over the top, and again just put a light coat of nail varnish remover on it. All the layers started to interact, and it produced this nice mottled effect.

 

 

Anyway, I fooled about with a MIR bubble here, even used cement dust on the top, but there are many more tests to be conducted to see if I can get the peeling layer effect right.

 

Hope this is of help.

 

Richie.

 

(No idea why vBulletin is double posting all my images)

[popeye]

That's very useful painting techniques.

Thanks for posting.

[Junctionmad]

Nice one. A masterclass ,

[enniscorthyman]

Fantastic.

[Noel]

Fantastic.

 

+1

 

That's talent

[scahalane]

Thanks Rich, great idea's there.

[Glenderg]

Thanks lads! For some reason, I forgot the "test" subject, an old MIR unit.

 

 

Grim!

[Weshty]

Yup, that's the money shot.

[Warbonnet]

I never noticed that the MIR bubble is missing the distinctive weld seams which are visible even through the caked on cement and crud.

 

Unreal work Richie. I look forward to our own bubbles looking that manky, whether it's achievable through factory weathering processes or indeed from the Glenderg works if it's not.