Rust Weathering with Three Colors (No Pigments or Powders)

Hello again. As per an earlier request, here is a quick How To for the rusted weathering I do on my sci fi terrain. This is a no powders or pigments technique that that uses paint and only three colors (four if you count the base). This is a quick way to get a dark iron rusted look for your sci fi/grimdark/post apocalyptic terrain.

You will need:

Krylon Dark Brown Flat Camo spray
Two large flat wide bristle brushes (drybrush)
Citadel Bestial Brown
Citadel Tau Light Ochre
Citadel Ironbreaker
Black wash (if necessary)

You don't have to use Citadel colors. Use whatever mid tone generic brown you like, but it helps if it has a reddish tint to it. I find Bestial is the best color for this. If you are using the new paints, you might have to find out what color replaced Bestial Brown. I use Tau Light Ochre, which used to be called Vomit Brown. Again, use whatever color that you feel is a good replacement. The key here is that this color has a bright orange tint to really make the rust pop.

Not pictured: Citadel Ironbreaker (or chainmail).

First you must spray paint or paint your piece with Krylon Dark Brown Flat Camo. Give it several light coats and wait for it to dry thoroughly. This is your base color. The key here is dark. You want it to be almost black.

Next, grab a large flat bristle drybrush and begin applying the Bestial Brown. You do not want to drybrush this layer. Actually, the opposite, You should be stippling the color on in the recesses (drybrushing brings out the highlights-rust appears in areas where water sits and along edges between). You want to put the paint on the brush, and then just like you would be drybrushing, remove most of it first on a paper towel to get most of the paint out. Then, stipple from the edges of the piece inward and on and along seems and joins or areas where rust would appear. Feather the color out as you go to blend it into the base color.

First stippled coat of Bestial Brown.

Next, you will do the same thing, but adding Tau Light Ochre. It is important here to NOT clean your brush. You want to dip your brush into the Ochre and then brush it out on a paper towel and get the previous color to blend on the brush. Begin stippling again, but this time you want to start hitting the edges and lightly drybrushing and stippling at the same time to pull the colors together while not hiding the base colors or the first layer.

First coat of Tau Light Ochre and Bestial Brown mixed on the brush.

Next, get a clean brush and do the same drybrush stippling technique on all of the edges and areas where you want the rust to be brightest or concentrated. This color will really pop, so it is important to apply lightly and feather out or there will be too much contrast. I like to stipple this color in areas where water would pool and rust would be the most concentrated. It's also good for the sharp edges and places where you want joins or seems to pop.

Final highlight of Tau Light Ochre.

Finally, you should add a very very light drybrush of a bright metallic such as chainmail. Here you just want the very thinnest edges and places where metal would wear to appear. This pulls the whole thing together and makes the detail pop out. It is easy to go overboard with this, so for me, less is more.

Here is the roof section weathered and in place in the unpainted but base coated building. There's lots you can do with this if you weather according to how rust actually forms and where water would pool or lay. It doesn't have to be entirely realistic however. You want to give it more of the overall feel of rusted and worn metal.

I have found that if you get too heavy with the drybrushing and stippling and you get too light with the colors overall (where the base color starts to disappear), then you can wash the piece with an overall black wash (or just in areas you want to darken) and then touch them up again. Or, if you want a darker and grimier overall look, a final black wash can pull the colors together and darken it all back down. I have found I have only needed the wash on the flatter pieces. The spots with lots of texture and detail generally don't need it. But, it's your terrain, so apply as you like to suit your specific needs.

For rusty water drips and pools I like to mix a wash of Tau Light Ochre with a black wash and then "drip" it down walls and in pools where rusty water collects or stains.

Below are some shots of different pieces from the project that have been weathered this way.

Rusty water stain under the door.

Rusty water stain along the edge of the floor and on ladder.

Rusted corrugated sheet.

Rusty water drips on wall.

Rusty steel mesh grill.

Sneak Peek...

I'm just going to leave this here...

Shanty Building How To

After my last post, a few people asked me how I made my shanty buildings and what parts I used. Here is a quick how to and a few tips on making post apocalypitc/sci fi/grimdark style buildings.

For the basic structure I used a set of old generic adobe buildings I made in the late 90s for Warhammer 40k (to be used as generic desert or Ork buildings). They were really simple structures with minimal detail beyond wooden doors and shutters. I used them for years for 40k before selling them for a song to Chalfant (Minis of Wrath blog fame) to be used for historical games. They got many years of use and when I recently got back into 40k, I asked Chal if I could buy them back. Once I had them in my grubby hands again I realized how boring they were for 40k, so I decided to trick them out.

When I originally built them I just made several generic block shapes from foam core, cut out windows and doors and covered the walls with textured latex house paint (get the finest grit you can). Real basic stuff. They were painted in a sand color and drybrushed white.

Still, they weren't very grim dark or rusty enough. Thus the series of recent posts on making them into shanties even the lowest scum hivedweller would be happy to live in.

Below are some tips and pics of the basic process of how I turned boring adobe into rusted hovels of a grimdark future.

Below are some of the plastic bits I use from both Evergreen and Plastruct. From left to right is a large piece of angle iron, a piece of channel iron, a smaller piece of angle iron, and a wide and shallow I beam.

angle iron, channel iron, and I beam.

I use the angle iron for corners of the building (then add rivets-explained later). I use the channel iron as brackets for the electrical conduit lines running up the outside walls. I use the small channel iron for details and for adding edging to plates. Not pictured is an octagon shaped rod I use to make bolt heads as well.

For sheet plastic I use deck plating, corrugated sheet, and tin roofing sheet, all in O scale. Besides those I also use plain plastic sheet in a variety of thickness for various parts. For screens I use plastic screen for porches that comes in a big roll. It's easy to cut and use for all kinds of metal grating details such as the door on the roof below.

For the floor of this second story I added various random pieces of sheet metal with rivets as well as a few deck plating pieces, and a very thin plastic sheet to mimic hasty patches.


For the screen door cover to the stairwell I cut out two hollow rectangles of the same size in plastic sheet and glued a piece of screen to the back of one sheet then sandwiched that between the second piece of plastic to make the door. I added a handle and hinge in plastic rod.

Here is the screen door glued in place. I later ended up ditching this door because I didn't like the way it looked and it blocked the other door.

Here is the bottom floor showing the stairs and the supports that hold up the floor above it. I like my buildings to all have removable roofs.

Here is the floor in place.

I used the door from a toy truck for the awning.

The front door to this shanty fort is from the set of plastic bulkheads in the Necromunda set.

Third floor roof in place.

Interior shot, second floor.

Interior shot, bottom floor.

For the electrical conduit running on the outside walls, I use hollow plastic rod and mark where I want it bent, then warm it with a candle (it heats up FAST so be careful) then bend it into shape and let cool. I then use small pieces of channel iron as brackets to hold it in place.

For rivets, I use a slightly time consuming, but easy and effective method. I bought small pins with flat heads and then drill holes where I want rivets. I then snip off the pin just below the flat head. I use a rare earth magnet glued onto the end of a paint brush handle to pick up and hold the pin head, then dab it into glue and glue in place in the drilled hole. It's a little time consuming snipping off the pin heads and fiddly getting them in place, but the magnet helps. If you snip a bunch of pin heads and store them for later, you can speed the process up by drilling holes and then just gluing them in as you go. I like using pin heads because the rivets are uniform and you don't have to sand them or fiddle with them.

Stay tuned for my next post about how to weather your terrain with that rusted iron look. It's a no pigment or powder technique that uses three colors of paint and a large drybrush. It's easy and it's fast...

Two Story Shanty

Yet another update to the shanty project. This time a bigger building with two floors and a porch. The middle floor lifts out to allow models to be placed on the ground floor. I'm getting a lot of practice with my weathering. I should call this town Tetanusville...

More Shanties...

Just a quick update of two more buildings I finished and a sneak peek of another terrain item I am working on.

This is the start of some mining equipment terrain to add to my sci fi games. I am using the electrical junction boxes that many people use for 15mm sci fi buildings and turning them into a large ore hopper system. The second pic is what the doors will look like that open to drop the ore into a large truck or hauler. The whole thing will be mounted on two large mounts that can move the hopper into position. The door will also have a hydraulic arm to open and close it. I don't feel like building six doors (or more if I build more than one of these), so I plan to make a mold and cast it.

More to come...

More Refurbished Buildings

Hello,

Just a quick update to show the latest building in the refurbishing project. Two are painted and two more have the detail work completed ready to be painted. More to come as they are finished. I am also working on a Warhammer 40,000 style mining tower. It's coming together nicely. Pics to come...

Building Refurbishing

Now that I am getting back into gaming in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the one thing I desperately need is sci fi terrain. Years of historical gaming has left me with lots of buildings and scenery that are great for Europe in the 1940s, but not so much the 41st millenium. I had some of the basics such as trees, rocks, and hills, but no buildings and very little scatter terrain that fit.

When I was going through some of my old terrain in the basement I came across a box of adobe buildings I had built years ago. They had been sold off to a friend then recently reacquired from him with the idea that I might turn them into Ork buildings. Looking at the buildings again it seemed they were built to well to turn into Orky structures but would make a decent basis for a sci fi shanty town.

I went to work with some plastic card, tubing, and basswood and turned this...

Into this...

These buildings should fit well with my post apocalypse style burned landscape terrain.