Paint peel effect?

[Rhynox]

Hello all, found the site through bit of hunting. Figured I'd drop a question and see what pops up.

I picked up a nice little chaos 40K army, I have been wanting to go a little further with effects on the vehicles. I have a Rhino that I am testing some techniques with and have yet to come up with an adequate look for a chipped/peel look. I want a nice weathered look on the armor along with battle hardened look.

I have hunted around the web a bit as I said but have yet to find a decent guide to such a technique. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

[LadyEyes]

There's a tutorial/article over at the Brushthralls site where one of them used slightly dissolved rock salt as a mask. I got to playing with the notion, and here's what I came out with...

I was going for rust under the paint, like the BT guy. But his rust looked perfectly flat. I've spent enough time around old, junky cars and trucks to know that rust comes in different colors and styles, but it is basically never flat and smooth.

So, I used a vehicle/historical trick I had read about years ago... I added a touch of baking powder (or you could use baking soda, but talcum powder was too fine) to the area you want to have look rusty with a little white glue first. Then you paint your rust color over that. If you didn't want to put rust, put whatever color you want under the peeled paint.

Important step: Now seal this with a spray matte sealer.

Next you dissolve a little rock or sea salt (you know, the larger crystal kind) in just a little water. You don't want too much water, but you want the salt to have enough to be somewhat of a paste. It looked like a paste with big lumps. Then spread this over the colored areas you want to show through and let it dry thoroughly.

Important step: Now seal this with a spray matte sealer again.

Now you put the color you want to have on the top layer. After it dries, carefully pull the lumpy, salt areas off the model. I used a knife point to do this. You can pull it in different directions for more or less peel. I pulled mine as straight away from the model as possible because I wanted the paint to look like the edges of where bubbles of rust have burst and eaten through.

Whatever you do, don't try the masking fluids that you find for most vehicle models. They are usually designed to work with enamel paints only, and if they come off at all they tend to leave a strong tint where they were. (Trust a woman that found out once.... )

Good luck with it! Show pics when you get some progress.

[Rhynox]

Wow I love the look of this and think I might just run the whole vehicle through the grinder. My whole look for this army will be an attempted, lost army. I'm probably going to go through with black legion scheme but make them take the look of a forgotten army. They were abandoned and left with no new gear and left to rot in the farthest realms of the galaxy. I will post pics when I can actually set up a backdrop and grab a camera.

I like how this technique leaves a raise distorted/bent metal look, I also think I'll leave a little salt underneath to have a rotten/eaten metal look. Thank you for passin this info.

[Demi_morgana]

instead of mixture Tanya mentioned You can also use liquid latex: in poland it's called "maskol" but I bet You can but same thing in modellers' store, it's used in painting aircsart models for protecting cockpits' grall elements
welome aboard btw

[Rhynox]

The one thing with this technique that I did different is the top coat I am using a kyrlon latex H2O paint. Dropping a coat of that ontop of the salt gives me enough leeway to pick and prod the salt out without ripping the paint. This leaves pockets of raised paint which to me seems a little more realistic give some rusted crumbling vehicles I have seen. The only thing left would be to pit the plastic a bit more and possibly try a pen drill in leaving real holes in the armor. I will try this on the under side, nothing like riding in an old vehicle where you can see the road go by without looking out the window.

The only problem I see is sealing the tank so I don't get a lot of peeling paint, through moving the tank around and such.

BTW: here is an image of my test, I hope I am within the rules of posting images (haven't checked the image size limit). This image does not do anything to the true look in person. I will dig out a better camera later but this is what I got for now.

Click to see full-sized image

[Skrit]

Looks worn allright. Although a bit shiny...

[Rhynox]

Oh it's shiny alright, in the pic. Was a tad wet when taken, after a few more hours it dried to a flat crumble effect. I have to go back over most of it to flatten it out more. Once I am done hitting this this with the rust wand I'll post another image.

[Skrit]

Cool, didn't know it was still drying!:)

[Rhynox]

Click to see full-sized image

While I enjoy this technique, I think I may scratch this attempt and start again. The salt I used seem to enjoy crumbling and left a crystal effect that I'm not sure if I like it or not....still on the fence with it.

Plus with only doing a limited area for test, it will be impossible to further the look to span the entire vehicle. The one thing that I am curious about with the salt used by LE if when fully dried it held to the piece firmly correct?

Either way I will attempt this effect across the entire vehicle and see how it looks. Think I might remove the top bay doors as well and bash the hell outta them as to look like a "falling off the hinges" effect.

I just hope the end effect isn't too much as to just make it look like a cheesy camo. What colors would be recommended for a raw metal undercoat look? I am feeling a raw metal/rusted and even dare I say plant growth...

[mahon]

definitely looking good and realistic. i like it because it's rough! looks like a heavily corroded surface. if you want a heavily weathered vehicle - it's a good way to go. then you can always add some modeling pigments or dry pastels, which also give this dry, dusty rust effect..

for quite another approach to peeling paint you can check Benathai's gallery and see what he did to his orky vehicles

As for image sizes we have no limits - it's quite simple: if people don't laynch you, your images must be right and you know, it's a mini-painting site, so it's much about pictures so most of us are prepared for that

and you can alaways include a warning if you post something REALLY big

and last but not least - welcome here I hope you'll find this site friendly and spend some time with us