Weathered Metal Effects airbrush *Tutorial*
After a couple of requests, here is my latest tutorial, weathered metal. I did this tutorial on a flat peice of plastic. I painted rivets and stuff to give the design something to weather. If this was a case I would just use the natural edges and creases.
What I used:
-Duplicolor sandable primer
-Krylon Camouflage tan paint (base color)
-Auto Air airbrush paints: (This could have been done with better matched paints but this was all I had. i.e. Red Oxide, Transparent Tan...
-Transparent White
-Candy Orange
-Transparent Black
-Masking Tape
-XActo Knife
-Basic Airbrush Setup
-Duplicolor Clear (clearcoat)
A quick note:
-I mixed the colors above to get the individual shades of tan I was looking for, just so no one is confused.
Let's get started. I started with a prepped piece of plastic, ready for paint. I used the Krylon Camouflage paint for a base color of Tan.
This is painted on plastic and prepped with Duplicolor sandable primer.
Then I masked off the edges of the large rectangle. Notice how I'm masking the top left hand edge. This is opposite of what you'd think, but I'm going to do the dark edges first.
Now for the edges of the panels in the middle. Same thing.
Yeah, this confusing sometimes, I made a mistake. Easy fix with paper towel and glass cleaner. Airbrush paint will rub off usually with glass cleaner, especially if it is freshly painted. Notice I didn't say dry. Airbrush paint is usually dry as soon as you paint it, because of the air stream of the brush.
Since I have this darker color already out. I'll go ahead and start some weathering. Notice I'm using what is call a dagger stroke. This is one of the fundamental strokes in airbrushing. In one motion you start away from the surface and start the paint flow as you continue your motion you bring the brush closer to the surface. This gives the narrowing of the spray pattern. As you get close tail off the paint flow and stop. What you get is a dagger type shape, hence the name dagger stroke.
The thing to remember is all your strokes should be from top to bottom for the weathered effect. This goes for all the weathering.
Next I painted the rivets, using my technique with a cutout mask and a ball point pen. You check out that technique here for a refresher.
Now I used white to highlight the top right edges of the panels and the rivets. I used masks for both of these.
Now I came back with a darker color tan and started more weathering around the rivets and random places. For the random places I used a piece of scrap cardboard on the floor of my garage within reach, because I didn't feel like getting up.
Now i came back over the design with Candy Orange. Red Oxide would have been a better color here, but all I had was candy orange.
Some tricks here are to use a freehand mask to make the rust pool up on top of the next panel. Small sharpness and change in colors on the design edges of stuff plays tricks on the eyes and makes things look 3D.
You could be done right here but I like using a big fat Clearcoat. Even over a weathered look I think it looks cool, but that's personal preference.
Notes:
-Small changes in the pattern at an edge is an illusion that makes something look sharp. It doesn't have to be much. That's why the masking in this tutorial is cool.
-Go easy on the weathering colors, too much and it looks unnatural and cluttered.
- The pictures in my tutorials are actually a little brighter than the design actually appears in these photos due to the flash. So remember that when your mixing colors.
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Originally Posted by jdbnsn
