Step by Step: How to paint a high quality vehicle squadron fast and easy Part 2

Welcome again dear reader!

German version: Click me

Today we want to put some paint on our tanks.

I made a lot of pictures and then realized, it wouldn't be enough to explain everything. So I choose to make a big testing card again, showing you the different stages of the weathering process and the tools I used.
I'll first explain everything with that "dummy" and than move on to the tanks.

Let's start with our materials again:

1: Hairspray
2: Salt. For our gaming model, the normal salt you're cooking with is fine. To add more realism you can also use different sizes of salt grains
3: Purity Seal ( a varnish). Every other brand will work to I guess.
4: Revell Airbrush Cleaner
5: Tamiya X-20A Thinner. This is the only stuff I know, that will thin your Games Workshop colors without clogging your airbrush. (most people out there use the citadel colors) The awesomeness of that stuff was discovered by my friend Zaphod Beeblebrox, check out his blog masterminis !
6: Tamiya colors. I used them to make new experiences, and I am really happy with them. It is hard to describe, but they are just right to airbrush.
7: An airbrush. I use the Gabbert Triplex (from a small German company), but every double action airbrush will do the job.
8: Pipette, to measure the amounts of thinner, fill your airbrush with cleaner, etc.
9: Scalpel...you'll see why :)
10: Stipple brush, just a very hard brush with very short bristles.
I forgot two things in my picture, tooth picks and little shot glasses, to mix the color.

A few thoughts to airbrushing: 
I use low pressure (around one bar) and very thin color (one part color, six parts thinner).
Don't forget to spray some cleaner from time to time, and you can spray for hours without problems. The Tamiya paint is really friendly to lazy artists :)

Todays colors are:

Chaos Black for priming, Tamiya XF-9 Hull Red for the rust tones, XF-4 Yellow Green to mix our highlight color and XF-13 J.A. Green as basic green.

I used an old sheet of plasticard for our exercise. It was primed black, then simply airbrushed with Tamiya XF- 9 Hull Red. (Someone told me, the F stands for flat, so it has a matte finish).
The right part was sealed with Purity Seal, the left part not.

If you seal the color, the next steps won't effect it. You can be sure that your basic rust color will remain as it is...no bad  surprises. But as I forgot the sealing on one of the dozer blades, it happened the result turned out really nice and full of life...in the spots where the rust wasn't removed completely...going on without sealing is gambling with the result.

Next I covered the whole thing with a heavy layer of hairspray. In the lower areas, I added salt. The upper areas are for our other tools. Be sure the hairspray is dry before applying further layers of paint. Again, you can ignore this, the color will crumble and crackle, which looks damn awesome...but will be gone after your first battle. Big potential for showcase painting I guess...

Now we cover the whole area with any color, I choose the green I am using at the tanks. I sprayed several thin layers, and highlighted the middle of the plate with a lighter version (mixed yellow in).
This has to be dry to the touch, but don't wait to long, as we need to remove it...

...REMOVE IT???  Yes, now comes the weathering part! We use some techniques, that will have more or less random results, which adds realism to our paintjob.

We cover the whole plate with steaming hot water. It has to be hot, so the salt will dissolve better (and hot water can hold more salt than cold). This soaks in for a few seconds.

WTF? My color looks...different?

This is normal, after drying, the really strong effect of lighter streaks will disappear.

Now we use a brush (I choose a soft big one, so I would remove the salt, but not to much flakes of color) and brush the salt away. The water soaks through our green paint and loosens it from the brown, because the hairspray prevents the two colors from clinging together.

Small amounts of salt will give you small spots of rust, while big ones will give holes in the green color layer.

With the stipple brush, we can create scratches, stains and so on. There are different ways to use it, brushing in little circles, with different pressure or scraping lines to create scratches.

Just play around and let the coincidence guide you on your first steps :) (Being random can also be a little vacation from planned painting)

The toothpick creates big scratches, that have rusted under the surface for quiet a time.

And the scalpel creates small scratches, really fresh.

So..I told about not sealing...here is the comparison between the results.
You can see that the brown color is dissolved by the hot water where we didn't seal it. The water itself becomes brown and while removing it from the plate that brown pigments spread around...can be quite a mess. But, if you are careful, you have a mixed rusted area, with tones of brown and black, way cooler but very random.

This is the effect if the hairspray wasn't really dry...or you use too much water, I really don't know which of both fails is to blame^^ It looks awesome, but I think it isn't solid enough for gaming...

You can check out the different effects after I tried around a bit.

You'll notice there are some bright, yellowish spots, some even white..I really didn't know how to avoid them, until I found a way to fix that problem. After applying a coat of Purity Seal, the effect was gone.

You may also notice that the overall look has slightly changed. The varnish blends everything together on the coast of some contrast, but knowing this, you can use higher contrast in the first place, to achieve the right degree in the end.

The lower part, where every technique is used and everything comes together, looks really nice in my opinion.

If you are interested in the hairspray technique and weathering and want to know more, check out this links:
MV Weathering Tutorial Part 1
MV Weathering Tutorial Part 2
MV Weathering Tutorial Part 3
MV Weathering Tutorial Part 4
Raffa aka Picster did a great job on those VIDEO TUTORIALS, over at Massive Voodoo. Thanks my friend for allowing me to link your stuff up :)

I'll show you progress pictures of the tanks now, most of the explanation has been done, enjoy and see what can be done :)

The dozer blades are the most damaged parts, tons of rubble and nasty explosions damage the paint of our tanks and rust will spread. So we add the most salt there, and all techniques are used excessive.

The highlights are sprayed in the middle areas. I used two versions of the green, each with a little bit more yellow in it to create some depth.

Different degrees of rust add live to a squadron. Some vehicles are older, some crews are first to pass a clogged street first all the times. Don't worry about that yellowish stains, the Purity Seal will let them vanish...

and thats the finished green on our dozer blades.

I try to keep the shades, so I just spray very little or no color to recesses. Again, the middle of every plate receives the most paint.

It can be very useful to attach your parts to some socket, so you don't have to touch the paint. Without sealing it the paint removes easy, and we don't want to have fingerprints and all the green at our hands.

Edges are areas, where the paint will be gone very soon after the tank left the factory. You can use your brush, or a scalpel to wipe the green paint of. (Be careful with the scalpel, to much pressure and you see plastic)

The turrets after sealing...

Some closeup to show what I mean with middle areas. The recesses and shadow areas received less color then the middle, where most light would hit.

We use the salt most in the lower areas, where rubble will damage the paint.

The contrast between light and shadow areas after two highlight colors.

We can ignore the yellowish spots, but where we see pure white, we have to clean again. Use hot water, again and again until no white spots are left. The puirty Seal won't cover them!

...so that all looks quite messy. Now lets have a look on the final results after sealing with Purity Seal.

And the yellowish spots are gone :)

I think they look impressive already...

A good point to end todays article. Tomorrow we will spray the camo pattern.
Please let me know, what you think of the article, what can be improved and what is good already :)
Have a nice day my friends, and don't forget to take a break from time to time, or else such a project drives you mad ;)