How could you put a Easy weathering with stuff from around home i.e. dirt oil spills accenting bolts ect.



Matt

You could try using some baby powder to "dust" up the kit a little. I would apply small amounts so as not to let the white overpower the base colour coat.

I've heard rock salt being used to apply scratches to your kit.

There's loads of stuff you can find around the house and use it for weathering.

If you have any paint at all, then most weathering effects can be achieved with paint alone. Pastels, pigments, aftermarket stuff may be somewhat better on occasion, but most weathering effects you see are strictly paint applied in one way or another.

For an easy weathering effect, paint the model with a somewhat lightened version of the base colour. Apply a wash of black or dark brown that has been thinned a lot. For washes choose a paint of a type different than the base coat. I.e. use acrylic underneath and then greatly thinned enamels on top. Do NOT use acrylic on acrylic (unless you seal in between coats, but I'm trying to keep it simple) as the thinner in the wash will reactivate the acrylic and they'll blend which is not what you want. You want the paint to pool around the crevases and the bases of the protrusions of the kit. Apply it all over.

Next dry-brush, which means taking a brush, dipping it into an enamel paint (I like buff or tan as a general rule), rubbing almost all of the paint off the brush on a cloth and then gently swiping the slightly damp brush over the high spots on the tank to pick out the details and, perhpas as you get better, scrubbing it into the larger flat panels to show dust accumulation.

Oil stains can be simulated with a fine brush dipped in a pretty thin mix of grey/brown and lightly trailed down the side of the vehicle starting from the filler ports, lube nipples. Remember, less is more!

Anything black on the real vehicle should be painted grey, with tires being a fairly light grey.

Decals go _under_ the weathering, not on top!

Voila, relatively easy weathering out of the paints you already have.

Now, for those of you who have been doing this for a while, you'll know that neither washes nor dry brushing are in vogue at the moment, and I admit I don't do things exactly as presented, but for "easy" with a very high ratio of effect to work, I think this is a great way to _start_ to learn to weather. Once you are getting good results from this you can broaden your skills and try other techniques that can be found here on Armorama and in magazines and other sites.

HTH

Paul