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Hey forumers, I am thinking about trying to paint my demolisher cannon barrel in a way that makes it look worn and used, with some sort of radiating blast pattern out of the muzzle, and I'm at a loss for coloration and technique. I can't seem to find any pictures of anything similar, either. Any thoughts or advice (or pictures?) Here's what they look like at the moment, currently the barrels are painted a very dark silver (mix of black and gunmetal grey)



Thanks!

Find some weathering powders. There are a number of manufacturers. Very easy to use and it will give you the nice powder burn/soot effects you're looking for.

Or dry brush chaos black around the muzzle, getting darker the closer to the aperture you get.

Thanks folks. My concern at this point is actually that my basecoat of paint (the dark gunmetal) will be too dark for the black to even look different! Should I lighten up the basecoat? Gunmetal metallic or codex grey? Or even go as light as chainmail? That would sure make the black stand out...

I think it will look fine.

Which, the Dark Gunmetal with black? Or one of the lighter gray varieties?

Paint the barrel like you normally would, and then drybrush/stipple some brown and black on the end. That's what I would do.

I guess that would give me an excuse to try stippling... never done that before either! Sounds interesting. I'll have to try out some of this!

I'd lighten up the barrels a bit, before you try to weather them. Unless the pic/my monitor has distorted the colors, I don't think you'd really be able to see even straight black. I do, however, like the darker metal look. Perhaps a drybrushing of your gunmetal mix with a bit less black would keep the general effect but lighten the background enough to try the stippled/drybrushed muzzle?