Siri's Guide to Painting Rust

[Sirithiliel]

So I was asked to do a step by step tutorial on how I did the rust on my Wyrmgear [located here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/56248-77177-rusty-wyrmgear/ ] so this morning I did just that with three of my Secret Weapon bases from my Bag O' Crap. I hope you find it useful!

Here's the three I chose, washed and ready to be painted. Six paints are used [pictured] and two brush sizes [pictured]

 

 

 

So first I cover them in brown liner and let that dry

 

 

Next, I dab at it with my Ancient Bronze. Throughout this whole tutorial, I dab with my brushes. It's a bit rough on the brushes, I recommend using slightly ratty ones you don't mind getting a bit worse. I dab using the side of the bristles, not the ends, but it still is a bit rough on the brush. You don't want to entirely cover the base, but do a decent amount of area in bronze. you'll cover most of it up later, but it gives you a brighter surface to put rust on than the brown liner. I did varying degrees of bronze on the three bases

 

Now you'll add your base rust on the bases, using an orange. I used Lava Orange. Again, i dabbed with my brush. I find it gives a more organic and sporadic feel than brushing the paint on. You'll want to leave the underlying colors visible in areas. This is all about layering the colors to make a glorious mess of colors 

 

 

now you add some dark areas to your rust. I found Bloodstain Red to be great for this! You'll again want to leave areas of orange peeking through. Don't be afraid to use a paper towel and wipe at areas of your base as you go, to get a gritty or smeared look. I did this heavily on the smallest [middle] base below

 

Now I go back over some areas with the Lava Orange to bring out a bit of brighter spots that got covered up too much by the red

 

 

 

Now we're going to use a metallic silver, in my case Shadowed Steel, to give a hint of underlying, un-rusted metal beneath that rust. You'll put this over the areas that you left the rust off of, where the dark brown liner is still visible. Don't be afraid if you end up doing too much silver, you can go back over it easily to rust it up. Even though you're actually putting this ON TOP of the rust colors, when you dab with your brush the contrast of shiny to not shiny will make it look underneath, like so:

 

 

Now we use the small brush that I haven't touched yet for this tutorial. Yellow will add some realistic color to the orangey red rust, but you don't want too much. My yellow doesn't like to put out paint so i have to take the cap off and dip my brush in the cap, so I usually end up with a thick yellow. I deal with this by wiping it gently with a paper towel after dabbing small amounts onto the bases

 

 

This is a touch up step, where you apply small amounts of orange and red. I did this because I felt that the effect I wanted wasn't completely there, and i needed some more rust over the silver. At this point, I'm rather unhappy with the manhole cover, because it's complicated, textured surface is making it difficult to get the effect I want

 

 

We pull back out the Ancient Bronze now, to add some shiny rust effect to the duller rust. You can note the difference especially on the manhole cover

 

 

We use the brown liner again! We're nearing completion. I use the brown liner to imitate dirt, shadows, and to get detail to pop. I put it into the detailed areas of my Wyrmgear's base, the cracks in the metal for example, and wipe away the excess to leave only the dark gap filled

 

 

We go back to the yellow, because I felt that i had gone too dark again. I went a bit heavy with the yellow on the man hole cover, especially the letters, in an attempt to bring the color up a bit. We're done now, save for some small steps

 

 

I used Pure Black to go around the edges to cover the paint strokes and to give it a neat look. This actually helped the manhole cover immensely, I think

 

 

Final sealant coat! I love how sealing them brings the colors out. We're done! 

 

 

I hope everyone finds this tutorial useful for doing heavily rusted bases/miniatures! You can easily adapt this to do less-rusted stuff by increasing the amount of visible metal underneath =) Look up pictures of rust, it's very useful. Rust is so colorful, there is so much variation in it, and my frustration with my Wyrmgear that resulted in me painting him rusty was a boon in disguise because I hadn't realized just how much fun rust was to paint and how beautiful it can be

 

 

Edited August 12, 2014 by Sirithiliel

[Willen]

/subbing to find it easily at home, since I can't see your pics at the office.

 

Regardless, thanks for sharing 

[ub3r_n3rd]

Yeah, I can't see these pics either on my work PC, will have to check them out at home. The like was for posting the tutorial. 

[Sirithiliel]

No worries. I had to upload the pictures via Photobucket so that I could describe each step. Otherwise they'd all be attached at the bottom haha. Figured this was the better way to describe what i'm doing in each picture

[ShadowRaven]

great tutorial. And one I am going to be putting to use for next Reapercon

[Chaoswolf]

Thank you very much for posting this! It's a very good looking effect, and since you broke it down step by step, it seems like it should be fairly easy to try myself.

[Sirithiliel]

I'd love to see what you all come up with using it 

[dsmiles]

This is really, really good. If I might add to it, however:

 

For really old, chunky rust, Secret Weapon (and some other companies, like Micro-Mark) makes several dry pigments. Spray (or brush) a little thinned pva glue on the deepest parts of the rust and sprinkle a little powder on it. Let it dry, and brush/blow/tap off the excess. It gives it a deep, structural rust. The issue, of course, is the mess left by the weathering powders.

 

(That would be in addition to the painting steps you've outlined. Not in place of.)

 

Now I'll need to pick up some of these paints. My personal recipe was GW's Blazing Orange mixed with Vermin Brown. (Which gets the rust close to photo #4, but I currently use the powders to take it further.)

[Sirithiliel]

I've seen those before, and thought about them, but I can't justify the price tag to myself or to my husband haha. We're rather limited on spending budget for miniatures and hobby stuff. So I did the best I could with paint =P I thought about using something to get a gritty look to the rust, like fine sand or something, but decided it was going to be too much a hassle

Thanks! I'll have to look up some examples of the weathering pigment, because I haven't actually seen it on a miniature before

[Willen]

I've seen those before, and thought about them, but I can't justify the price tag to myself or to my husband haha. We're rather limited on spending budget for miniatures and hobby stuff. So I did the best I could with paint =P I thought about using something to get a gritty look to the rust, like fine sand or something, but decided it was going to be too much a hassle

 

Thanks! I'll have to look up some examples of the weathering pigment, because I haven't actually seen it on a miniature before

 

Yes you have! I mean, you did look at my Dragon Diorama, right? 

 

You don't need to buy pigments. To try the effect and texture, go to your art store and ask for pastel sticks. You can buy they individually and are quite cheap; get a rusty orange and a rusty red (or whatever you like; I like Burnt Umber for mud); then find a small container and place the stick on top of it. Run the edge of your xacto along the pastel stick and you will get "powder" in several degrees of roughness. Ta-DA! You have pigments!

 

I found out I quite like mixing them wiith alcohol, and paint that mixture. Alcohol evaporates and leaves the pigment behind in a rough texture. I need to try using watered down acrylic medium with them to get them to fix on the surface.

[Sirithiliel]

Oooh I have seen your diorama! Interesting, I might have to try that sometime =)

[AnneO'Leary]

Thank you for posting this. I've been working on a base that I want to look rusted and my attempts failed miserably. I have all these colours so I'm going to attempt to replicate what you did.

[ShadowRaven]

looking forward to seeing the result Anne.

[Sirithiliel]

looking forward to seeing the result Anne.

 

Me too!

[dsmiles]

I've seen those before, and thought about them, but I can't justify the price tag to myself or to my husband haha. We're rather limited on spending budget for miniatures and hobby stuff. So I did the best I could with paint =P I thought about using something to get a gritty look to the rust, like fine sand or something, but decided it was going to be too much a hassle

 

Thanks! I'll have to look up some examples of the weathering pigment, because I haven't actually seen it on a miniature before

I have one SW pigment (red rust), one Vallejo (green earth oxide) and I picked up a dozen for $20 from Micro-Mark (Doc O'Brien's brand: rusty red, rusty brown, muddy red, faded blue, grimy black, highlight white, grungy gray, patina green, mildew green, dirty brown, gritty yellow, and desert sand).

 

I've heard the thing with the art pastels, but haven't tried it.