Vehicle weathering and detailing.
 

After many requests,I have finally got my lazy butt into gear and put together a basic vehicle weathering how-to. The main technique you need to master for this is dry brushing. For anyone who doesn’t know what dry-brushing is, I’ll explain.
Once you have dipped your brush in the paint, you need to use a rag to remove as much of the paint as possible, so that the brush is almost dry – hence the name. Then you simply flick the brush back and forth over the part you want to weather. The more times you flick the brush across an area, the more weathered it will look. Check out this Alley Viper shield as an example (weathering isn’t just for vehicles);

Choosing which areas of a vehicle to weather is fairly straight forward. I generally go for areas that would normally wear on the real thing. Areas such as foot platforms, bumpers, grilles, panel corners, and “high points” such as bolts, hinges, hatches, etc. I also like to add paint to unpainted sculpt details like tools, etc. See the front of this stinger and the Night Ops Hummer;

To achieve the weathered look, apply Silver paint to the selected areas first to simulate paint wear, and when that touch-dries, apply a little red oxide paint over the top to simulate rust. Another tip is to paint some red oxide underneath a hinge, etc, and smudge it down with your finger to simulate rust that has washed down over a long period of time, like on this HISS tank;

You may also notice the “mud” I painted on the treads. This is just a dry-brushing of brown paint, although sometimes I use real mud for added effect. I also apply this to vehicle wheels, like on the Stinger and Vamp pictured below. The Stinger also shows some real mud applied behind the wheel to imitate mud spatter. You can’t have a weathered vehicle with clean wheels, can you?





The Vamp pic above also shows another nice detail to add to vehicles, namely painting in cockpit details such as seats and console, etc. It’s just a little thing that can add to the realism of a particular vehicle.

Below are some more shots of little touches you may like to add to your vehicles.

That's great and all, but when YOU do it, it looks fantastic and correct. When I do it, it looks like I was drybrushing and pretending to make things look weathered! I'm so jealous. I never could get that technique down when doing Warhammer stuff. I always built the stuff, let other people paint and texture it. :P Very nice, tho. The secrets are out!

It's about damned time Craig!!!

Crap, now I'll have to start doing some 'How-To's'.............thanks!! :p ;)

It's these little details that make your pics so awesome, Craig! Thanks for Sharing!!

Easier Said Then Done But With Your Tips It Sounds Like I Can Do It :D