Topic: Realistic tank painting

[Woozie]

I was looking at the pics of the new Valcor variant from FW, and this particular pic caught my eye:

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Imperial%20Guard/Krieg/tanks/valdor14.jpg

I would really love to be able to replicate the worn paint effect there, i.e, you can see the lower paint layers fragmenting through the above paint layers. I'd like to do something similar, only instead of doing it with camo it would just be chipped paint. Obviously, it looks too natural to have been painted, so I'm wondering: what do you use to produce such an effect?

Also, does anyone know any tutorials for painting in such a style with tanks? It would be greatly appreciated.

[Skeeve]

Check out this site.

http://ultrawerke.blogspot.com/

but to point you directly to the article here is the link

http://ultrawerke.blogspot.com/2007/03/painting-and-weathering-tutorial-part-i.html

Now, He is using air brush there from time to time. While it does simplify life somewhat it is not necessary. Also, at some point he is using oil paints there to create this washed-out look. You can do the same with acrylics using drying retardants. He is using MIG pigments. This you cannot replace by anything. If, however you are planning a fair number of tanks I suggest you should get them or something like them. The weathering effects you can achieve with dry pigments cannot be duplicated with anything else.

[Woozie]

Blimey, that tutorial was complicated... all I've got are acrylics and, uh, brushes. Though I am an art student so I also possess some oils, though I've never considered using them for modelling.

I can see that this fellow has put ALOT of work into that model, but I'm not looking to go that detailed. All I really want is the fragmented effect, and that seems to be created with the dry pigments. Thanks for the links anyway skeeve, that blog looks fascinating.

[Skeeve]

Blimey, that tutorial was complicated... all I've got are acrylics and, uh, brushes. Though I am an art student so I also possess some oils, though I've never considered using them for modelling.

I can see that this fellow has put ALOT of work into that model, but I'm not looking to go that detailed. All I really want is the fragmented effect, and that seems to be created with the dry pigments. Thanks for the links anyway skeeve, that blog looks fascinating.

Surprizingly it takes less time that it seems (granted, at this guy level it is still probably a month or two per tank:). You can do that fragmented effect with pigments or you can do it with salt. Yes, cooking salt. Here

http://www.modelersite.com/May2003/english/Desgastes_Eng.htm

Also look at this tutorial and the other five part of it on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnBa6nzX_aE&feature=related

Personally, I never liked this methods, mostly because I like to paint with very dilute paint. Dilute paint means a lot of water. Salt doesn't like being in water - it melts

 

[finoro]

Couldn't you get a similar effect just by dry brushing and stippling the base colour over the darker cammo colour?

[Hammer of Vaul]

One of the simplest ways to simulate paint chipping is to use a soft HB pencil, simply run it along edges and draw scratches onto your model.

[Woozie]

But if you look at the picture, you can see that the fragmentation is far, far too small and unorganized to have been done with a brush. A sponge, maybe, but drybrushing doesn't work like that.

It seems like the salt use is the most likely culprit (on the Valdor I mean); however, I have my doubts as you can also see fragments of the camo colour over the base colour, which would mean the painter painted a base of opposite colour at each site where he intended to put (and not put) the camo. This seems quite unlikely.

Still, I think I'll use the salt method. It seems to work very well. On the subject of removing solids from models; has anyone tried using masking fluid? I have some of that as well and with that you could also potentially achieve the effect of solid texture around the area of fragmentation, quite easily.

[Dux Aurelius Elysius]

Re: salt.  I've tried it, had very little success and found it more trouble than it's worth.

To me, that looks like they painted it on flat, waited until the paint was a little tacky and then used masking tape to take it off (masking tape being only slightly tacky will should lift it in parts but not completely).  The best way to tell is that FW actually do an excellent book on weathering which shows how they do a lot of the effects that they use on their models.  If you can get hold of that I would assume that's the sort of thing it would have in there.