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I’m looking for some tips on how to weather black vehicles without an airbrush. If anyone could share any tips or links I’d really appreciate it!

Figured my usual weathering method of sponging in dryad bark and then leadbelcher probably wouldn’t work on black. And metal alone would look kinda flat. I’m also using an urban scheme, in case that’s relevant.

Cheers!

Give them a dusting of light grey around the treads and lower body panels to represent concrete dust from ruined buildings.

Maybe do the same sponging technique (I assume what you're aiming for is showing paint worn down to primer, and then bare metal?) but with something like a mid-grey colour instead of dryad bark? Would show up better than the dark brown.

Honestly sponging is a pretty good method for weathering vehicles, and to increase variance, change what colours you use like different metallics to represent aged chips versus fresh ones.You could also have a play with pigments (or ground up hard pastels) and apply that to crevices to add to the feeling it's in an urban area. A couple of greys and browns would be good.

An airbrush is useful but I don't even use an airbrush for weathering.

cheap way, drybrush light grey. (and i do realy mean dry)
expensive way, get pigments.

I don't weather with my airbrush anyway. Sponge is by far my favourite method along with brush(longer scratches and wash)

I also don't weather vehicles with airbrush. You don't need it. There are multiple chipping methods out there, then once that's done, you've got oil filters and panel lining, drybrushing, pencil graphite on your edges, streaking, and finally powders and pigments.

I painted this vindicator several years ago. The weathering is done by using a sponge to apply a rusty brown color to the tracks and bottom of the vehicle, followed by sponging silver onto the tracks and all of the sharp edges. Then adding a few edge highlights with the same silver in some places.

The important thing is to start with a base of dark gray, not pure black. That will give you a lot more room to work with other colors.

Yeah don't do what i did which was base chaos black then paint over completely with abaddon....

What I used to do (before I got an airbrush) was to drybrush the area with the intended color, glaze it with black, then drybrush over again.

You can see it on the treads of this Land Raider:



Pretty simple process, just takes time for the glaze to dry.