Dull or rusty blades

[Goddesstio]

Any suggestions/tips on how to paint blades meant to look dull or rusty?

[MojoBob]

Start with a dark brown base colour, and then mottle on successive layers of lighter orange-browns. You can unify all the rust colours with a thin black wash/glaze. If you want to give it a metallic sheen, lightly skipping over the raised detail with a HB pencil can do the trick. I finish with a thin, uneven line of pure silver down the edges where the blade has been sharpened.

[Glitterwolf]

I cheat, I use vallejo Special Effects Paint Set.

Works well for me.

 

 

Example of what I did with it, look at her plinth:

 

https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/80977-bonny-ann-pirate-queen-bust-by-glitterwolf/&tab=comments#comment-1717769

 

Or at the Howdah:

 

https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72598-war-turtle-with-howdah-eureka-miniatures-by-glitterwolf/

[Goddesstio]

Thank you so much guys, this is great 🥰

[MojoBob]

There are some rust FX paints in Vallejo's GameColor line too, which I like a lot: 72:131 Rust and 72:138 Dry Rust

 

 

The effect depends a lot on how much or how little they're thinned. The Dry Rust is quite a gritty, granular paste, and it dries to quite a gritty finish. On this iron maiden, I painted it in a steel color first, overpainted it quite heavily with rust washes, and then brushed off some of the highlights with a dry stiff brush before it had cured completely.

 

 

On this sewer grill, I just painted it entirely dark brown, and then gave it a couple of washes of Rust pretty well thinned. That one dries to a very bright orange, so I find it's best to build it up in thin washes rather than slapping it on straight. If you don't mix the wash too thoroughly, you can get some fortuitous lumps of thicker rust paint still floating in it, which can look pretty good once its dried, but it's easy to over-do.

[ced1106]

After reading and watching various rust tutorials, I've realized that different rust effects have very different techniques. 
 

If you're looking for "quick and dirty", partially mix together a brown wash, an orange rust (or dark orange), and some dark red blood. Paint strokes in the direction the sword or axe would swing. Might want to make the orange and red more pronounced that the picture.

 

Spoiler

 

 

fwiw, If you ever paint post-apocalyptic Edsels 🙂 you can paint the body of the car in rust, paint the car (maybe wash in brown), then use an acyrlic nail sponge sanding file (like a sanding stick, but a small sponge), to wear off the paint.

 

Spoiler