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I have been experimenting quite a bit on the below Chimera. Many firsts, including working with resin, oil paints, weathering powders, and airbrushing. So far I was quite happy with the model, up until I made an attempt at rust effects.

I have been using the Imperial Armor Masterclass books as a guide for techniques, but I have to say, I am not happy with how my rust turned out. It just looks like random brown/orange dirt flicked throughout the model. My rust mix consisted of burnt umber oil paint, brown rust weathering powder, and white spirit. I then airbrushed white spirit over the rust to try and create a diffused and blended effect. However, I believe my oils managed to dry a bit too fast because I used too much spirit in my rust mix, so the airbrushing did little to nothing to the rust on my model.

How do many of you add rust to your vehicles? I am looking for a more realistic/military modelling effect. I have found many guides on how to paint rust on things like body armor/chainmail and tank treads, but not vehicles themselves. If you have any pics or tutorials, they would be appreciated

If you guys could please provide some constructive criticism, it would be most welcome. Please excuse the picture quality, I did the best I could with my phone Also, I know there are gaping holes in my Chimera track guards, as I was a little overzealous while sanding and soaking them in hot water to get them to fit. I was thinking about hiding them with camo netting, but that's another experiment for later.

When I'm painting stuff I want to look rusted out, like this battlewagon,



I actually start with a bright metal primer (like army painter's chainmail), and work from there.

I use a large old beat-up brush to stipple on several layers of browns and oranges. Then I use a black wash over the whole model, and then lightly drybrush the whole thing with a mid-tone metallic (chainmail), figuring that edges are likely to get touched or banged more than surfaces and will have a bit of a gleam to them.

And then I paint the rest of the model.

I've done rust effects, and what I like to do is start from brown, edge highlight metals, and dry brush metals on, then stipple brown and orange over that, then pick out scrapes and other things in the original bright metallic. From there is just figuring out how much metal you want rusted.

Add layers of washing where desired and you get a pretty decent spotty look.

Did that for my mekboy and I thought it turned out alright.

I've seen other things, but basically it amounts to orange, browns, maybe washes

Some I've seen done with redish-orange brown pigments...those tend to look nice too.

Thanks guys. Zomnivore - would you happen to have a picture of your rust work?

Get some hairspray and do the following..

Apply a really dark brown
Apply patches of red
Apply smaller patches of orange.
Apply hairspray (or AK chipping fluid)
Apply main color.
Use heavily watered large brush to scratch the surface..

Enjoy excellent chipping and rust effect.

I use Dark Flesh (whatever GW calls it this month) patches with orange patches a drybrush of silver on the edges and a thin oil wash with Cadmium Orange

Thanks for the input guys!

 Capamaru wrote:
Get some hairspray and do the following..

Apply a really dark brown
Apply patches of red
Apply smaller patches of orange.
Apply hairspray (or AK chipping fluid)
Apply main color.
Use heavily watered large brush to scratch the surface..

Enjoy excellent chipping and rust effect.

I do want to eventually experiment with hairspray. I've seen it applied many times and think it looks fantastic. In my case, I wasn't sure how to go with the hairspray technique because I was working with a camouflage pattern. How would you go about this differently if you were using a camo scheme on a tank?