What is your favorite chipped paint technique?

I like to use Testors enamel metallic paints on the chipped areas. Then, once dry, I apply a coat of acrylic paint usually MM Acryl. Once the acrilyc is dry to the touch, usually no more that 2 or 3 minutes, I take an x-acto and carefully lift small chips of paint. It gives you a nice "step" to the paint, and really, it is chipped paint! Hope it helps!

prepaint then rubber cement, then paint my primary colors.  I have tried just painting on dark grey onto my larger scale machines and find that it just does not look the same..it looks like i painted it on.

 

same with rust, i do rust as a process beginning before i ever put paint on, adding baking soda to glue and thinning out the plastic and making small holes in it from the backside, then coating with rubber cement and working my process up from there.

HTH

David

Salt masking: great for some scales, very easy to over do it.

Liquid mask: I've never met a liquid mask I liked so not too fond of this one.

Hair spray: oh gawd can this do impressive work. Only issue I have with it is the lack of the ability to do complex schemes w/o hairspray between each coat.

Over the top: Meaning a fine brush & or sponge applying the chips over the top of the paint. This works fine for most things, easily switched to various scales, but can take a bit of time. 

I haven't tried it myself, but this technique seems to give some impressive results:

http://www.tabletop-terrain.com/archives/2008/02/19/852/

I intend to give it a try as soon as I can find some marmite.

 

 

Welcome Lord Vapor

Our 501st troopers use mustard on thier armor to depict flaked off paint. It works, but most of the Legion guys either way underdo it, or way overdo it but then they are mostly non-modelers.  I may try this on my coming project.....i thnk it may fit right in with my MaK kits....

thanks for the reminder!

 

David 

 

Thanks for the ideas guys. I really like the trick of actually chipping the paint. I never even thought of doing that!

  Regarding the hairspray idea, I just went back and read the FSM article on that from a couple of months ago. It looks to me like it works a lot like the salt method, but for larger areas. I'm not sure I understand how one could be subtle with it and just do some chipping around the edges of panels and surfaces. Has anyone here tried it?

 

  

 

 

Hairspray can be very subtle. You can wear down the edges or a large area. Scrapes, edge wear, rust fading, etc. It's all a matter of how much pressure and how long you rub.

I use the salt mask technique for large areas, then follow it w/ fine chips painted w/ a 6/0 liner. I just tap the brush very carefully on edges where wear would occur.