rust/oil streaks and paint scratches

I use colored pencils to simulate rust and paint scratches. Not the cheap ones your kids use, but the dollar a crack ones from the art supply store. I have a large bundle of Prismacolor pencils in various colors. They are great for making subtle color variations, scratches, rust, oil and gas stains, bare metal, etc. They can be blended with a blending stub or faded with a water wash. The nice thing about these pencils is that if you don't like the effect, you can wash them off and start over!

Hey all,

This is a very informative thread. It seems like weathering skills seem to evolve as well as grow. There are alot of techniques I haven't tried yet, but will be testing soon.

For paint chipping I use a styrene sprue stretched as if you were to make an antenae ( heat ) then use this in either testors or oil paint , and rub it over the raised sections and sides of the model , the key is to be subtle here as too much would hardly be realistic ,and make them random and in different directions wear comes form all sides ! Use the primer color of the vehicle with occasional bare steel or rust colored spot . Any vehicle used in brush , trees dirt is going to get ruffed up a bit , add artillery blast and or gunshots , well you know the rest ! Any surface where a gun may recoil or lots of foot traffic will have bear metal , as will the hatch sides where they contact each other during closing , rivets also get worn of paint .

The Internet is indeed a wonderful tool as the author in that article points out. So are these forums and the people here. Information and experimentation are the keys to developing your own particular style. Get some cheap kits to practice on or build up a "target" kit that can take some abuse prior to trying things out on a valued member of your collection always helps as well.

You can also try this
http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/german/kkmarder/kkmarder.htm
Did you try a forum search for this? It's a pretty common topic.

As Moses points out, it depends on what type of paint scratching you are trying to simulate.

For German vehicles with the dark yellow basecoat, I make the scratches using MM Rust as that is the closest thing I've found to the Red Oxide primer used on vehicles for the time period. My tool for application is pretty basic...it's a round pointed toothpick dipped into slightly thinned paint and "tapped" or in some cases, lightly dragged, around the areas I want the scratches to appear. This is done before any washes or weathering otherwise the scratches stand out too much as opposed to blending in under a light coat of dust or grime. Haven't tried to scratch up a dark colored vehicle yet, but find out what the underlying primer color would have been and use that or a variation of the same color as Mo suggests.

Here's an example of what I mean:



I'm not sure these effects can be replicated with an airbrush. If someone is able to do it that way it would be interesting to hear about it.

I agree with Moses on this one about the rust/oil streaks. u can also simulate paint chips using Model Master jet exhaust, and a fine brush. u can also take a small brush with bristles that have been bent around abit, and is generally useless now as a good brush, and use that to drybrush chips and such. also try salt, applied with water over a silver undercoat on the vehicle, which is then painted over in the scheme u want. then just use a toothpick or scotch tape to remove it, and the paint over it, leaving the silver undercoat exposed.

I do not simulate rust, oil steaks or scratches with an airbrush. For rust I will use different shades of red and orange pastels or very thinned down Vallejo Calvary Brown Acrylic for streaks. Oil streaks and residue is usually created by filters or very localized washes (i.e. fuel intakes, rear of hull, etc.). I simulate my paint chipping/scratches in two ways. On German armor where a Panzer Gray bascoat would have been applied, I use Vallejo Black Grey with a very fine brush (i.e. a 10/0 or a 000 Winsor Newton). I will also use Humbrol Matt 33 with a fine brush.

Cheers

Rob