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What are some of your favorite ways to weather, battle damage or generally make tanks look used? I saw a guys blog the other day who was useing a sponge, had a nice effect, can't seem to find it now. Please be as detailed as possible, pics are appreciated.

I generally dry brush with dirty coloured paint. Sometimes I use turps to put on oil slicks -- it can give a convincing drip effect.

One guy did an article about using Marmite to create chipping effects. It looks fun and cool.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Marmite_Weathering_Method

Nowadays a lot of people are using special weathering powders.

What is marmite?

It's a delicious spread made of yeast left over from beer brewing. It's black and sticky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite

You could probably use smooth peanut butter if you can't get Marmite.

The basic point is that it sticks onto the tank and can be washed off afterwards with warm water.

Honestly, I'm beginning to sound like a whore, but I wholly recommend picking up Imperial Armor:Masterclass. It helped me step up my armor game a whole lot.

There are literally 100’s of ways to weather tanks. Check out http://www.missing-lynx.com/index.htm for tons of great suggestions for weathering.

I am going to give the Hairspray technique a try as soon as I get started on my Tau and DKoK.

For my Praetorians, I only used Mud and some Rust-All for weathering. You can see some close-ups on my Praetorian 555th thread here on Dakka.

The "marmite" method looks cool, but sounds a bit gross, don't know if I wanna smear Jif all over my models, what is the "hairspray" method? I once saw an article where kosher salt was applied as a masking medium, then the model was airbrushed, then the salt was removed, are you talking about doing something along those lines? I am not gonna buy any expensive Forgeworld books, as much as I would like to, but the Macharius tank looks awesome, thats the sort of weathering I would like to do.

Just look up military modelling. All the forgeworld book does is consolidate a variety of military techniques into one book.

Wayfarer wrote:Just look up military modelling. All the forgeworld book does is consolidate a variety of military techniques into one book.

Can you recommend me some? I dont want to spend so much $ on forge world book D:

Here is a consolidated cross section of all the articles from The Painting Corps on the subject.

The Hairspray technique is actually simple. Prime the model in whatever colour you want your weathering to be. Most modellers use a red-oxide colour, but dark grey is popular as well. After the primer has a chance to dry thoroughly, take some hairspray and give the model 2 quick coats (the ticker the coat the finer the weathering chips will be). Spray your model with its base coats and whatever you want to. An Airbrush makes this stage go MUCH faster. Once your happy with the base colours, grab a stiff toothbrush (or some other toothbrush type implement), some hot water, and settle in for a long process. Dip the toothbrush in the hot water and scrub away at the top layer of paint in the spots where you want to add weathering. Concentrate on raised panel lines, moving parts, where crew would mount up etc. If you have done everything correctly, the hot water and scrubbing action will abrade the paint and leave the primer coat showing through. Add highlighting and other techniques to taste.

Whats a good way to keep the powder from falling / washing off during varnishing?

Super light coats of matte varnish... anything else will blow the pigments away or kill their color in a second. It's really the one major problem with using pigments.