I have been an avid modeler since I was 14. I’ve read Fine Scale Modler for as long as it’s been in print. Man it is a grand impovement over earlier publications. Odd though that it’s taken me this long to actually register here. As I said I have been a modeler for a long time and have even been in the professional end of things being a salesman for a hobby distibutor out of Texas and building models for movies, museaums, and personal collectors.
I have been out of the hobby for some time and just recently got back to it. Wow the changes in the quality of the kits. It’s like night and day. The quality of realism has also really improved. I’m sure if I keep looking I’ll find an answer to this question but wondered if anyone could point me in the right direction? How are they getting those realistic paint ships and scratches? Your help would be greatly appericated.
To sum it up, paint chips can be easily made by using a sponge. Just go to your nearest hobby shop and look for them. Then you just dip into the paint and just apply.
Scratches are done by using a very fine brush, draw freehand.
To get to the point of realism, and beauty, it takes practice and practice and practice.
[#welcome]
Welcome to the forum and to the dark side.
I personaly like to use the salt or hair spray tecniques (for hairspray chek the Doog’s nomad beater in autos he has toutoryl for it) for salt you put on you base coulor and when it drys you brush salt on with water and after that is dry air brush on your next coulor over the salt you could try to brush paint it but I haven’t tryed that yet when it drys remove the salt and your base couler should be seen through hope that helps! ya brush work is great for chips to!
Problem with the sponge method - and you want to have dabbed pretty much all the paint off the sponge first if you want to use this method - is that it takes a fair bit of practice for it to work convincingly. Incidentally, sponge-backed scouring pads from your local hardware store/ supermarket work just fine, no need to go to your LHS for specialist stuff.
You might find that a sharpened dark brown watercolour pencil works better. You juat draw the chips and scratches where you want them. Ordinary graphite pencils (hard ones for preference) work well for scratches, exposing the base metal, too. Time-consuming to be sure, but more controllable, and if you don’t like what you’ve done, you can rub it off with a putty rubber, and start over!
BTW, the salt method of weathering only works reliably if you airbrush the top coat, and that directly on top, at a low pressure. Otherwise, you risk knocking off the grains of salt with your brush, and painting over the area which they previously covered, which is not what you want at all. In fact, for anything more subtle than a heavily-weatheed late-war Japanese fighter, I’ve found the salt method pretty useless. Applying the salt controllably in small areas is a frustrating exercise.
Every method has its up and down, but from my point of view, the sponge method is the most easiest to make paint chips. Plus, maybe also the cheapest. You can actually just visit your nearest kitchen and look for used one.
The salt method is the hardest one in this conversation because the modeller needs to get the hang of it putting the salt and let it hang there while your airbursh is spraying.
Here’s three builds/tutorials I did that show how I do it. One is using the sponge method, one others using a combination of different methods including the hairspray thing, and one done using the brush method. I actually prefer the brush method now.
hairspray and scratching
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One using sponge…
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One with the brush…
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Patience, and knowing when to quit are the key to a good effort…
I’ve always just used a fine brush and some black/dirty brown at full strength along the edes and impact areas. Just dot it along and be sparing. Use some base color plus white to add lightened chips around your darker ones to simulate chips that don’t go all the way down. Look at the tutorials above, they are excellent. Practice on some of your older kits, or on plastic card stock to get a feel for the technique.
I’ve been experimenting with rubber cement masking for chipping on armor and aircraft… I spray the desired undercoat color, then when that’s dry, I stab the area to be chipped with rubber cement and let it dry for about 15 minutes or so ('bout how long it takes to mix an overcoat color) and apply the paint. After it’s dry, I just rub off the rubbet cement and reveal the color underneath… I haven’t tried it on a build yet, I’ve got none at that stage or past it…
It seems really effective for aircraft wing and prop leading edges, and on armor grab-handles, brush guards, hatch edges, muzzle brakes, machine gun mounts, and bent/battle-damaged sheet metal…