Urban environment weathering

[Bloody Legionnaire]

I've finally started painting up a few of my BaC units as World Eaters and I'm trying to figure out which colors are going to be good for representing the wear and tear of operations in an urban environment. I'm not quite sure which color I want to create dust and dirt with for the lower portions of the legs. All of the bases are going broken asphalt/street designs. Any ideas?

[Flint13]

Excellent legion choice, Prey! :D

 

So a couple of different ways you can go depending on the style of weathering you want to do.

 

If you're looking for a sponge-chip method, I'd say try out a gunmetal color and a muddy brown. It's how I do my own Eaters and works well against a gray scale base.

 

If you're looking for weathering powder, I'd say muddy brown and soot gray for streaks.

[Bloody Legionnaire]

Excellent legion choice, Prey!

So a couple of different ways you can go depending on the style of weathering you want to do.

If you're looking for a sponge-chip method, I'd say try out a gunmetal color and a muddy brown. It's how I do my own Eaters and works well against a gray scale base.

If you're looking for weathering powder, I'd say muddy brown and soot gray for streaks.

Thanks for the reply flint13! I'm planning on doing both chipping and have dust and dirt accumulation around the bottom of the legs. Something like soot grey is exactly what I was trying to find.

[Flint13]

Ah there you go!

Then I'd suggest gun metal chipping at the sharp edges of their armor (knees, hands, elbows and such) and sooty dust in the recesses. Like they just came through a burning city

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

Grey powder to represent human dust, broken concrete dust, urban rubble dust. Black to represent soot from the fighting and weapons, and simple human grime.

 

If there are any areas in the city where there would be dirt, you'd also have brown and yellow powder weathering from kicking up that dirt.

 

If you look at dirty automobiles in a city IRL, they're mostly covered with light gray or yellow dust near the wheels.

[DistroyA]

I would personally recommend mixing both soot grey and muddy brown for the effect you desire, as it wouldn't look right with just soot grey. Judging by the dirt I see on concrete in some areas of towns, I find it's somewhat of a brownish hue of grey. Mixing the two pigments would give a more natural look if I'm honest. :)

[Bloody Legionnaire]

Is there a company that has this soot grey? I did a quick web search and couldn't find anything.

[DistroyA]

I'm not too sure myself, but I'm guessing Flint13 is referring to the FW pigments.

[Mango Polo]

Pigment powders are powders are powders. Ammo, FW, Kromlech, Secret Weapons Miniatures... doesn't matter, just look up which has the more interesting shades that you want once you've figured out what you want to achieve.

[Sanguine Rose]

If you want, Secret Weapon makes a line of powder pigments that work wonders for weathering.  I have used them for dust and dirt effects on fantasy models before.  I would share pictures, but I just moved and my dragons are a good 4 hour away.  If you want some good ideas, the WW2 modelers can work magic with weathering.

[Subtle Discord]

Do yourself a favor and go to the art store and get yourself a selection or full set of quality dry pastels or conti sticks. You can usually get them in single sticks or full sets; Faber-Castell are absolutely wonderful, but a but a bit expensive. Very easy to store since they're sticks, and you just need to grind as much as you need on some fine sandpaper or screen. The colour range is amazing if you want something unique, and you'll have enough for years with one stick, in most cases.