How to Paint Rusted + Chipped metal.

If you have any questions / comments, please feel free to post on the forum thread for this tutorial.

Hello all, this forum can be broken up into 2 separate parts really, the first being a quick way to paint rust, and the second being painting chips in the metallic areas of minis, I tend to use them together though so they're being lumped in the same tutorial.

Equipment/paints
1 Old crap medium sized brush to cut up, or 'soft' stippling brush.**
A nice detail brush
Paints going from black, dark and light brown, plus an orange, and a silver, I used:
The Army Painter Matt Black
Bestial Brown Mournfang Brown
Blazing Orange Troll Slayer Orange
The Army Painter 'Plate Mail Metal'
Glaze Medium will make your life easier but isn't entirely necessary.

**Mine is made from a horrific cheap brush from a pound store, I got about 15brush is a set of varying sizes, they're useless for anything else but their low quality soft bristles work perfectly for this once cut.

Rusted Metal

Step 1) I tend to work from a chaos black undercoat when doing this, you can base straight in the mix from step 2 if you like though, the only real advantage of starting from black is that you can get a neat black line around the edge of your plates if they're against bright material etc.

Step 2) Paint a fairly thick layer of bestial brown+chaos black on the entire area, all of the following steps are done 'wet' so if you're doing multiple models a bit of glaze medium in the mix will work to slow the drying of paint.

Step 3) When the previous layer has dried slightly and become 'tacky' or thick get your bought/made stippling brush - see **above, and splodge some pure bestial brown on in 'random' patches, I tend to concentrate more on the edges of objects.

Step 4) The same as the previous step, but now with Bestial brown + Blazing orange, do not worry about being neat, unless going over the edges will ruin previous work etc.

Step 5) Pure blazing orange, as with the last 2 steps, but use slightly more sparingly unless you want it to look massively rusted.

Painting chips in metal
Step 1) Take your brush and paint scratches or chips in your object, here I'm using black+brown, but in general you want the base layer of the colour you're working with - E.G if I went from regal blue + ultramarines blue to Ice blue highlight I would do this with regal blue. This goes against some chipping techniques which I've outlined below (no pictures sorry!). Avoid simply edge highlighting areas, you are not after 'uniform' shapes! It's hard to be random, but be patient, google some pictures if necessary. I tend to go around different parts of the model in no order with particular chipped shapes in mind and put them wherever. Then fill in any blank looking areas at the end with a few small chips.

Step 2) Carefully fill in these areas with the metallic of your choice, one reason for choosing a dark colour is to make sure that the silver chips stand out, in this case I used Army Painter 'Plate Mail Metal', with a tiny bit of black added so it wasn't ultra mithril bright

Step 3) Done, repeat as much as you like, this is a wonderful technique, which requeres patience rather than skill, and is a great way to add interest to edges without highlighting them.

Second chipping technique (copy of the first, just using different colours, and no metallics)

Step 1 Take the highlight colour used on the area (e.g. Ice blue from the last example), and make your chips' outlines with that, a great way to do this is to use a bit of ripped sponge and 'stamp' it on edges, I used this on my stormraven.

Step 2 Fill these areas with a rusty colour, I tend to use my favoured bestial brown + black.

Done - here's how it looks on a stormraven

And a closeup (apologies for the quality)

Third Rust technique - Combining the above together - simply filling in the rusty coloured chips with small metallic chips.

That's the lot, as ever any questions thoughts, your preferred way of doing it etc comment here, or let me know on twitter

Byron

What our customers are saying...

Element Games Team

Eg staff

Stockport Store and Gaming Centre

Our UK Stores

Element Games London

Element Games Birmingham

Element Games Stockport

Element Games Nottingham

Element Games Sheffield

Customer Service

Contact Us
Track Order by Ref/Email
Returns
Privacy Policy
Terms and Conditions

Information

Stock Information
Delivery Information
Payment Information
FAQ
About
Gaming Centre
Jobs / Careers

Account

Register
Sign In
Track Order
Order History
Gift Vouchers
Store Credit
My Wishlist

Community

EVENT TICKETS
Affiliate Scheme
Painting Tutorials
Link To Us