Sunday 28 April 2013

Chipped Paint

With the great feedback from my Leman Russ Exterminator, I have been looking at ways of expanding on my weathering effects to make them both easier to create and even more realistic. One of the most time consuming parts is adding all the little paint chips, as the individual highlights and shading of every chip starts to add significant time to a project. Many modelers with access to an airbrush speed this process up by using hairspray and salt crystals, or another masking agent, as an undercoat to the final layer and then dissolve this final layer allowing a previous undercoat of rust or metal to show through. Quite ingenious!

'Basecoat' of drybrushed metal, sealed twice with clear coat.

I thought I would try this myself using spray cans only, but instead of pre-applying the chipped areas before the final coat I used a cheap and hardy clear-coat to seal the base coat, and actually chipped the final layer away using a sharp knife or sculpting tool. As such I have spent most of the weekend waiting for paint to dry, but the results are promising.

I will be drilling the gun barrels soon!

Even following my usual procedure for spraying on a cold (and wet!) day, I was not prepared for the lengthy drying times, and to be sure the clear coat had dried fully I allowed 24 hours between it and the final coats of Desert Yellow and Army Painter 'British Armour'. These were only touch dry when I started to scrape this evening, but the results are already looking good:

Now to add some rust and dirt using pigments, glazes and washes.

As you can see, I need to be more careful with the drybrushing undercoat where it will show through in larger sections, and I am not sure whether to edge highlight before scraping, or do it all in one go including the edges of the chips. I have three of these Killa Kans to paint, so I will let you know how it goes. I will also be letting the paint dry before chipping any further to see whether this affects how easily the paint chips. At the moment it's still wet and slides around, rather than chipping neatly as desired. Watch this space!

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