Chimera Conversion part 2

So this is how I left the Chimera after building, basecoating and drybrushing it up:

Meets the three colour criteria for tournaments and everything! But I wanted to add some fluff to mine; I wanted it to look like it had been stolen from the PDF, whitewashed and then allowed to fall into disrepair. I used a couple of interesting (and new to me) techniques for this...All learnt from other tutorials around the Internet.

The first step was to get some of the heavy weathering to the whitewash done. For this I elected to use a hairspray chipping technique. This has been around for years and years, but is summarised really nicely in the Andys Hobby Headquarters YouTube channel. 

In essence the process is to seal coat the model to protect the underlying paintwork (I used GW purity seal, it gives a nice satin finish). Then a couple of heavy coats of hairspray are applied and left to dry.  The next step is to apply the coat that you want to weather. Here I wanted to put a whitewash coat on, and make it look like it had worn through. The best way to do this is with an airbrush, but I don't have one. Instead I used Montana Gold - Marble, and applied it using a zenithal lighting type pattern.

Here was mistake number one. The Montana Gold sprays do not go on as smoothly as the GW ones I am used to...and I didn't test out first! The finish is speckly around the edges, and to get anything smooth on the top I have had to put the spray on too thick (not damaging the details, but a bit too much for hairspray weathering). I would only recommend Montana Gold for basecoating or as a primer, don't try and do clever transitions with it.

The next step was harder than it needed to be as a result. Taking a toothbrush and some water I basically scraped off the overlying white paint. The thinner the overcoat, the less effort you will need to put in, obviously this is important if you have lots of delicate details on the mini.

I wanted more depth to the weathering than this, so I left it all to dry off properly and then started again: another two coats of hairspray followed by a (much lighter) white coat, and then the brush.  You can repeat these steps as often as you like until you get the weathering you are happy with. Remember to do another sealcoat at this stage! Here is where I decided to stop:

So that looks ok, but I was never happy with it since I over applied the first whitewash. I decided to try and make the save with some creative washing. I basically put a dirty horrible wash of Nuln Oil and Drakenhoff Nightshade on.  I did this by having both pots open and dipping randomly into each (so the mix was never the same twice). I then got some onto the model, trying to both filter the main panels and get into the crevices, mushed it around a bunch and then dabbed some off with tissues/fingers. That doesn't sound terribly scientific, and it wasn't, but I managed to experiment a bit and get an effect I was really happy with:

Next step was to apply a pin wash with the Nuln Oil to encourage some depth around the details.

I started to put some grime on now, designed to look like the bolts and scratches have rusted and then the rust has streaked down the paintwork. I did this with a sepia wash, very carefully applied in the areas where rust would run, so dripping down vertical panels, but pooling on flat ones. The overall effect is pretty convincing I reckon!

So I think thats the paintwork pretty much done for now. The details are all that's left to make this a finished project...and I will cover those in a future post where there will be some experimenting with tank treads and rusting techniques! Thanks for reading!