Weathering your ship

Weathering techniques are usually applied to the model after it is almost finished.  On a white hull, a little running rust would be a good idea.   Running rust is the name given to the stain caused by having salt water draining or flowing over a rusty item.  

If you don't have ships to view near where you live, take a look at some box cars on the local railroad. They get the same sort of runnign rust stains.

A little goes a long way-- a little rust by the anchor, and the scuppers (where water drains off of the deck) is probably enough.   You can use a drybrush technique with some rusty orange colored paint.

If you have a white ship, and you want to make it look like it was in the ocean more then on a mantel, then drybrush some dullcoat around the bow section, edges of the hull, rails, and walkways, but try to leave the center portions with a satin finish.  The salt pits and wears the paint, giving it a duller look.

You didn't say what scale or what ship, but the smaller the scale, say 1/700, the harder it is to show wear details like rust and chipped paint without making it look out of scale.  Many of us use washes, thinned paint that is almost iridescent, with watercolors and oils that are slightly off color of the base color to blend in areas of chipped paint and rust so that the weathered details don't stand out and appear out of scale.  Keep reading up on weathering and we would like to know how you are doing.

Scott

Here's some rusty boats...

I  would try a light black wash, to put shadow and "dirt" into the corners and crevaces. And dry pastels to dust rust onto and down surfaces.

Those are some -seriously- rusty boats! I was going to say that a warship wouldn't usually be as badly rusted as that, but then I saw the destroyer in the last photo. What nationality and type is it? Is it a ship in current service, or a scrapped/mothballed one?

Anyway here's what I do to represent rust weathering: For larger-scale models (1/72, 1/150 etc.) I use a "wash" of burnt umber oil paint heavily thinned with turpentine/white spirit. Apply it with a fine brush to the point where you want the rust, and the wash will run into crevices and/or down the hull of the model, giving very realistic-looking rust streaks.
I used this technique on the 1/72 Flower-class corvette (HMS Bluebell) I built earlier this year, I posted some photos of it on Modelwarships.com a while ago but will also post them here if anyone is interested.

On smaller scales such as 1/600 and 1/700, possibly even 1/350 and 1/400, the oil wash technique tends to look too heavy and "overscale", careful drybrushing (or maybe weathering chalks as used on armour models) is the best option in this case.

The last image is of the DDG Charles F Adams. Shipyard storage...