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after some reading and a lot of videos (thank the dark gods of painting for youtube!), I painted up some plastic spoons in my night lords colors and gave the sponge method for paint chipping a few tries. here's the end result:



on the left-most spoon, I sponged on ultramarine blue and the highlighted it two different ways with codex gray. one style fills in the center of the blue blob, the other just lines in the bottom edge. not sure which style I like better, or if I should use a mix of both. filling in the blob seems to look better for larger blobs (see near the bottom of the spoon).

second spoon from the left has two different attempts. the darker blobs are vallejo german gray with a bottom edge highlight of space wolves gray (same highlight color I use for the armor). I don't think the dark gray works; not enough contrast with the armor. I don't think using the space wolves gray as a highlight color works well. the lighter sponge blobs are codex gray. the ones near the middle of the spoon were highlighted along the bottom with space wolves gray. the ones near the top of the spoon were shaded along the top with black.

moving on to the third spoon from the left, the dark splotches are straight black and highlighted along the bottom with codex gray. the more directed lines near the middle were an attempt to do longer scratches; painted on codex gray and then highlighted with space wolves gray. meh. the rest of the lighter splotches are more codex gray attempts.

for the right-most spoon, I sponged on blobs of vallejo black metal (a dark gunmetal that's very shiny) and then shaded the top with black. due to the shine of the metallic, you can't even see the black shading unless you catch the light just right. underlining with a lighter color would have even less contrast. I'm considering the use of metallics here as a fail.

at this point, I'm leaning towards the colors on the left-most spoon (ultramarine blue blobs with codex gray highlight). a close second is the codex gray blobs with black shading along the top, but I don't think that scheme is as strong as the blue. what are your thoughts? any suggestions on how to make this look better?

How about something like a really bright silver metallic (something along the lines of runefang in the GW lineup or equivalent) and then give it a light wash just on the scratched areas with a dark brown (trying not to overly obscure the metallic) and then maybe a highlight with the original bright silver.

Though that'd probably work best just for the sharp edges of panels.

hmm, yeah maybe on the hard edges of a shoulder pad or greave, but probably not on a flat surface. I'm not sure I'd be able to apply the wash delicately enough for it to stain the silver without staining the area around it, though. I might try throwing a bit of wash onto the metallic spoon I tested earlier and see what that does... may just be a matter of reducing the shine to make that work

I think you should do the chips in a contrast colour mixed with grey, with some bright highlights innbetween. So for a dark blue it would be a bright orange. with grey.

I also like the 3rd spoon.

I'm not sure I understand this suggestion... you're saying to mix bright orange with gray and use that for the blob color? what ratio would you use? 50/50, more orange or more gray? what would you use for a highlight color?

Check this out, I think it may help you in this department: http://thebrushbrothers.blogspot.com/2011/02/yellow-grey-marine-some-step-by-step.html ...It makes for some pretty convincing battle damage.

@scooty: that guy does some nice work!

pretty similar to what I'm already testing out, though he's more deliberate with each scratch is brushed on. does look really good, though... the big problem I'm having is figuring out appropriate colors. the color combo he's using looks great on light and mid-toned armor, but I think the red/brown might not contrast enough with my dark blue armor. I also use red as a spot color, so not sure if that would clash as well. I do like the look of the white and black edging, though. will have to paint up a few more spoons and try out more colors, I guess

and once I get all this figured out, I get to repeat the process for doing scratches on brass...

 varl wrote:
and once I get all this figured out, I get to repeat the process for doing scratches on brass...

Black/brown for the scratch and highlight them with a bright metallic, maybe mixing your brass color with silver or something similar.