Weathering tips?

[Ensis Ferrae]

Hello all, I'll try to be brief here so that there's more room/time for answering questions. On my "to-do" pile is a growing number of endurance racers, and for some of them I want to do that certain weathering that they all have at the end of a 24 hour race (those that survive).

 

The noses of the Audi and 'Vette are what I'm on about. For the length of the race they are just getting pummeled, and collect up all those bugs and marbles and general grit.

And that's what I'm asking y'all about today. I have a bunch of AK Interactive weathering stuff, and they have been great for things like dust/mud/smoke but I'm not sure what general techniques/products to use for the nose bits on the car.

[64SS350]

I guess first I would call it Race Worn, not weathering.

You could try spattering from a stiff brush or the salt technique, which I haven't tried yet, only watched others.

[misterNNL]

It looks like you are trying intentionally create what the majority of us are trying to avoid. The first thing I thought of was how overly thick paint spurts of a my rattle cans at the worst possible time leading to bad words being mumbled through clinched teeth. I personally could not out that much effort into a project then bug splatter it. Maybe a friend would be willing to hold the car out of a moving car window on a buggy late night drive. Of course this is all in jest. Hope someone here can offer you real suggestions to achieve the look you want:)

[Dave G.]

Look up some videos on stippling and some on spatter techniques. In one you use the tip of the bristles of a fairly stiff brush, in and dapple or dab the paint on, in the other you flick the end of the brush at the model but don't actually make contact, the paint spatters off the brush. You might find it in weather technique vids but don't rule out artists vids. Armor modelers are good at this stuff,you could probably get more tips on this stuff in an armor forum where they build tanks and infantry equipment.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Dave G.

[Mike999]

Good advice to check the armor/military boards.  Especially articles by Mig Jimenez, who came up with many weathering tricks and products currently in use.

I have one of his books on the workbench now, and here's one way he does mud spatter.  He warns us to practice before doing this on an actual project, and be very careful : use a stiff brush and dip it in dirt-colored paint. Then using only the air from your airbrush, no paint, hold the paintbrush near the model and blast air from the airbrush through it.  Done right, that gives a very realistic mud spatter.

Some of the cars in your photos seem to show a combination of dirt spatter and paint actually chipped off, from flying gravel/rocks on the track. Chipping is another topic often covered on military boards and you'll find many different ways to do it.  One way is the salt technique, if you want a heavily chipped area.  Or you can do it with a small, sharp brush dipped in a primer-colored paint, doing each "chip" by hand.

Here's a Mazda Cosmo I recently built. These cars ran in the 84-hour Tour de Marathon at Nurburgring, so they were beat to death by the end of the race. Photos of the real cars show that they had a heavy layer of asphalt "grunge" around the rocker panels, and I tried to duplicate that.

 

 

 

[Dave G.]

A lot of that "stuff " that gets plastered on the cars is rubber picked up off the track by the cars in front of them. Drag cars too. around the rear fender wells, I used to drag race and it's just how it was lol.

[Ensis Ferrae]

Thanks all, I'll have to check for these armor forums and other resources.