On the Workbench: Ork Stompa - Rust Spotlight

Greetings to all and sundry. Well, the weekend is here and therefore my projects are on the workbench. Due to an impending trip to Nottingham to allow my Orks to kick ass and take names (so long as the names are not difficult to spell) on an epic scale; I needed to paint my Stompa. I thought I would take the opportunity to throw a spotlight on the Jeff-Rust technique I have mentioned many times in the past. What better canvas than the mighty Stompa for teaching rust technique on eh?

Dayum! That thing is all manner of huge! The Stompa has been primed (black believe it or not, the glare from the lights knocks it to grey).

The Stompa-Boss Isambork Kongdoom Brawnell; Chief Mek of Waargh Skumrender. Adding a tank commander like this helps to give scale to the model along with an appropriately Blood Axe character. The little DJ Grot is actually a spotter with cool WWII style microphone and headphones. Now for the painting. The first step is a rough basecoat of thinned Dark Flesh. This - as the photo below shows - does not have to be terribly neat. Mostly it is for the recesses and to provide a darker texture to the paint job.

Stage two starts with finding a seriously knackered large drybrush. Load this up with vermin brown, wipe off most of the excess and stipple the surface with vermin brown. This is a practice thing, knowing how much to put on and where is half the battle. Happily you cannot go too wrong with this method and it is really worth trying out.

Once stippled vermin brown you repeat the process with Macharius Solar Orange - see? A use for that paint that isn't slayer hair? - like all foundation paints MS Orange is very desaturated and won't jump out of the layered effect you have going on in the way Blazing Orange (that I used to use before foundation paints came along) does. Once you have stippled this you will have that "20,000 leagues under the sea" rusted to death look:

If you are doing scenery - an abandoned tank etc. - this is where you give it a wash. You want that decrepid look. We, however, want an unmaintained but functional asthetic. So we now add a metallic tone that will give weight to the model. Simply drybrush Boltgun Metal on over the surface of the tank. Make sure to use a very dry brush and work in a circular motion as this will pick up all of the edges and surface texture. This is where you control how rusty the rust will be. A heavy drybrush will make it look simply weathered. A light drybrush - like here - indicates more serious rust problems.

Now, I think we can all agree that the above shot is a tad shiny for Orks. At this point we throw on a wash of Badab Black. Make sure to avoid pooling (check out the lower line of the jaw to the right to see what that does if you don't catch it. Doh. Never mind, I'll fix it in the next part) by redistributing the wash to other regions.

To summerise I present the journey of the chainsaw blade from dark flesh model to rusted hulk:

In part two I will cover painting chipped paintwork and some thoughts on camouflage schemes. Hope this has been useful. If people like this style of post then please comment and it will spur me on to do more.

TTFN

Go to part 2: Advanced Paint Chipping