Valkerie Progress 2 - to Weather a Valkerie.....

Right, after a frantic day of painting Krieg, I spent the last few hours of the day on my Elysian Valkerie.

In my last post i said i would document the techniques used to weather this bird, and this is what i have for you today. These techniques are taken from Imperial Armour Masterclass from Forgeworld - a book i highly recommend!! These techniques are transferable to all vehicles and colour scheme, so i hope you will all find it helpful!

The first thing i wanted to do was create a chipped effect on the paintwork. As you can see, the Valkerie is far to clean and pristine!

To do this, take a piece of foam (any will do but carry case foam is particularly good) Dip the edge of the foam into some Charadon Granite foundation paint. This could will act as the base colour of the metal that lies underneath the paint job. Wipe off the excess paint so you have just a little bit more paint than you would normally use for a drybrush.

Then gently apply the paint using the foam to the areas of the Valkerie that are likely to see wear and tear. These are usually the edges of the hull, access ramps/ladders, moving parts etc. You can also apply chipping to areas of the hull that need breaking up a bit, but this is entirely up to you.

The finished result should look something like this.

Already the Valkerie looks weathered and beaten. You could leave the weathering here at this stage if you wanted! However, i like to go for that little extra bit of realism and add even more weathering.

Get hold of some oil paints. I use Winton Oils paint, as they are available in pretty much every hobby store you go into! For this Valkyrie i have got a Burnt Umber (brown) and Lamp Black (well, black). These two colours will simulate the build up of soot/smoke and oil on the hull. You do not want to apply them directly though, as the colour will be far to strong! Dilute the colours using white spirit. The thinner the dilution the weaker the colour, and vice versa. Theres not set amount for the dilution so you'll just have to experiment a little until you get the right mix.

Once you are satisfied, apply the black to areas that are likely to accumulate soot and muck (all hull creases, rivets, engine parts, etc) This is a terribly easy part of the process, as the mix will just run around the rivets and creases very easily, leaving behind a deposit of your thinned out oil paint.

A cool effect that's good on skimmers and flyers is some directional weathering (don't know if that's a term, but if not i just coined it!). This represents the collective muck being dragged across the surface of the hull by wind shear. For this part i stood the Valkerie on its tail so gravity could help me out a bit!

Gently drag some of your oil paint mix across the areas of the hull that you want the weathering. In this case i used the edges of the wings. You will need a stronger mix for this part, or if your careful, neat oil paint. Once you have applied the paint, put some white spirit in an airbrush. Now gently spray white spirit over the area that you just applied the paint. It will slowly start to diffuse and hopefully run down the wing, leaving a paint-snail trail as it goes. If you don't own an airbrush, then use a paintbrush dipped in white spirit and carefully drag the paint down in the desired direction until you get the desired effect.

Hopefully you ll end up with something like this:

The technique can also be used to 'burn' areas of the hull that might see extreme heat. In this instance i used the black mix to represent soot and exhaust fumes discolouring the tail wings on the Valkyrie.

Right that's it! Hopefully you'll end up with a Valkerie that looks a little something like this:

As you can see these methods are very easy, and make a hell of a difference to your vehicles. For me it really brings them alive!

I hope it all made sense, and i hope you find a use for these techniques! If you have any questions at all, please ask!

Laters