Sunday 16 October 2016

Weathering heights - How to clean your palette with mud


Like often, I've engaged myself in a stupidly vast amount of projects at once... The good thing is that I'll be able to show you plenty of cool stuff at some point and that things get done. The bad thing being it takes some guts every now and then to get started given the amount on the table. But hey, this is not me whining or anything, just explaining why I needed a little break.
One of my favourite ways of avoiding hobby burn outs is to actually paint. I mean paint something I don't care much about and that can potentially provide rapid and high return on investment.
So here we are.

I've lately got my hands on a weathering kit from Vialudibunda. Good stuff, you get everything you need and you've got a nice selection of colours to play with. I know you can grind your own pastels into pigments but honestly, I've tried it and I've found ressources like time and energy were best invested in other things (and the result is better too this way).


Just to ease things a bit, I poured a bit of white spirit in a glass...


And got an old palette and 2 brushes. One used for taking the pigments from the pot to the palette, the other to apply the pigments with white spirit. Trust, me, using 2 different brushes will save you a lot of trouble.


First I have to say I started on a old tau kit that had been severely abused before and I just tried to fix a couple of things in the build and then zenithal sprayed it with dark grey from beow, light grey from the sides and white from above. A little white drybrush and wash of black and brown after that I was good to start.

Oh by the way, I know the thrusters are glued the wrong way, I thought this was a good way to just untau the thing.

After playing with the pigments for a while, I sealed them with a coat of antishine matt spray from Army painters (otherwise they'll still be able to go where they want). You do not realy want to try applying the varnish with anything else than a spray or airbush at that point of course.
Then I decided to add a bit of weathering with the faithful blister foam technique with a layer of reddish brown.


Followed by leadbelcher.


Et voilà ! I've kept it quite light and decided it was good enough.


It's easy to go over the top with weathering and I wanted something readible from a distance as I'll use this piece as scenery or objective marker.
I just had to add a few graffitis here and there just to make it more like it's sat here for years just gathering dust and dog piss.


I won't tell you what I'm working on but if you're good enough, I'm sure you can guess what Orctober and genestealer hybrids releases combined can lead to... ;)

(Bonus points for those who find where the grafs come from)

18 comments:

  1. Very nice mate - I love seeing something modernish used in an old school way, 'tis a thing of beauty. This is very cool, and should be a really useful bit of terrain or plot point - the weathering & graffiti is ace!

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    1. Cheers, I wanted cheap and rewarding, that's what I got !

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  2. This is good, I like this. The graffiti is all from the RT book except the kanji which is from the pot noodles you ate while you painted.

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  3. I have to disagree with you there on the pigment JB. Easier, yes, but better? No. It's the same base ingredient that becomes paint after medium is added. A cheap pack of pastels ground on sand paper or on a small cheese grater yields the same results. But yes.....it is easier to buy them ready made :)

    It's a cool transport JB! I thought it was a TAU vehicle. I'm not really up on the newschool stuff ;) The engine's swivelled around really make it look unique & like they were made to fit that way originally. Cool design choice!

    "Marines out" (almost finished) is a staple Off world phrase.....poor marines, what did they ever do to deserve such derision?.....probably quite a lot really! :D

    Oh, and I can't help but sneak a peak at your "to-do work" on your bench :) What are the blue guys? And that large unprimed Robot dude....he looks ace! Where's he from?

    Top work again buddy :)

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    1. I'm a lazy fuck really, since I haven't come across a proper way to grind my pastels the way I want them to be, I've fallen back to the safety of getting them ready made. The grain was way too coarse which was of limited use. I have no doubt that without the proper method you can turn things the other way with cost becoming a great advantage.
      I'm not into taus really but with reversed engines I thought it look casual enough.
      The blue guys are asgard barbarians that have sat unfinished for 8 months now... the big robot is one I got from Thunderchild miniatures along my pack Mootant. it's a great piece of lead really and I expect it's gonna be fitting to test more weathering ;)

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  4. As someone way much lazier (and more inept) than you, I can only say I'm in love with the results. I've nece dared to use pigments, but all the results I see are pure magic to me. Well done, man.

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    1. I don't think lazy or inept fit you modelling wise (don't know about the rest). Like you I never dared plaing with pigments until I did. I still have a lot to learn but it's fun. I'm sure you'll have a great time with them.

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  5. Nice. I have some pan pastels but have always been to chicken to use them. I've also always wondered how to fix them in place.

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    1. Believe me, I was in the exact same place until I decided to dive in and try it on my scenery this summer. It finally wasn't as complicated and definitely worth a try. I'll make mistakes for sure but it's a fun tool to have in the box.

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  6. Cool weathering. Never mind the blue guys what about the Dark Eldar SSylth lets see it oldhammerish!

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    1. It's stand alone so I could/should find hil a slot in the painting queue really. It kind of scares me since it's such a fine model. ^^'

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  7. A very rapid and hopefully gratifying use of a battered old kit A-Man.

    Spray varnish is the decision maker for me re weathering. It's too risky, at least it is in the local weather conditions.

    No denying how well the pigments work though.

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    1. To be honest, I would never have dared spray anything else and UI still have to varnish my scenery to fully protect it though. This time I varnished in non-optimal conditions and it ended up being good enough so my faith is not fully restored but mending I'd say;

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  8. Nice piece ! Reversing the thrusters changes the vehicle and makes him very suitable as a piece of scenery lying in an old hive city.
    I have to admit I'm much more ionterested in the orc-hybrids to come !

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    1. I'm working on them at good pace, they'll be a good entry for Orctober ^^
      I think reversing teh thrusters was a cheap but effective way to procede to be honest . ^^

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  9. Now that's weathering. Looks really cool! I think the freehand painted words could have done with a layer of weathering (or wash? I'm guessing here) on them BUT please my two cents could be completely wrong as I have almost zero experience of weathering on this scale. My apologies if I had suggested something completely stupid. :) My Millennium Falcon project will be my first ever full scale weathering and the fact that I haven't started on that speaks volumes. I'm terrified I'll mess it up. Oh well, we all gotta fail somewhere. :)

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    1. Th emarking definitely need some weathering as well indeed.
      I'm totally confident in you making the falcon look good, your past output leaves little doubt about it. ;)

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