Following on from a couple of previous posts, i’m working on a diorama of a T34/85 in Spring '44 passing by a derelict BT-7 dating back to the German invasion of June 1941 in the area of the Pripet Marshes (picture swampy moist conditions conducive to rust). A working title for the diorama is “Retribution”.
I’ve been trialling some rust techniques on a T26 as pictured below. What do you think? Too much? Too patchy? About right? I stress this is not the model i intend to use in the final diorama, just a rust test mule.
I would say that it looks pretty good, although maybe a light drybrushing of ‘surface rust’ between the patches is in order to make it flow a little better. Huxy would be 100% correct for modern steel, but we are talking about war production, rush to get it done, 60-70 year old low grade steel. 1940’s Steel is quite a bit different than modern steel. there would be a LOT more impurities in than in modern steel, so it tends to rust a little differently. While in modern steel, it tends to be a little more uniform, it looks like you have captured the patchy randomness of older steel.
A lot of what I do at work has to do with restoring older military vehicles, and we are always amazed at how random and senseless some of the rust is. Parts that you would think would be mostly gone (toolboxes, tools, sheetmetal, etc…) are sometimes largely intact, while thick armor plate is insanely bad.
It’s not too bad, but depends on the type of rust your going for. If your goal is older corroded rust it’s a good start,just add some light rust in areas where water will collect on the flat surfaces. With rust you have to work from dark to light rust. A newly rusted metal starts out as a bright yellow/orange color then darkens with time. A base coat of hull red is a good starting point, then add the different shades to it. Are you using the real thing or pigments? I use real rust powders on my wrecks.
I use real rust also. I drop a magnet into the catchment tray on a pedestal grinder in our maintenance workshop so that it collects really fine metal particles. I then put some of those in a small bowl and moisten them with Oxidising Patina as shown in the photo below. The metal quickly turns to rust which i then use like a pastel.
For heavier rust areas i dampen the area of the vehicle i want to rust and sprinkle some of the metal particles onto it so it sticks. I then apply the Patina to that.
Seems to work ok, just needs some trial and error testing to get the amounts right.
