Nurgle Rhino [WIP - Adding Rust Effects around the Chipped Paint]

Chipping paint was just a beginning in what is going to be a lengthy weathering process on the Nurgle Rhino. In the past, rust effects meant dry brushing bright orange and toning that down with a dark brown and/or rust coloured wash. That approach now seems overly simplistic. Currently, the process involves a variety of rust hues, textures, pigments, washes, oil-based streaks, etc. It's all about trying to achieve the next level of realism. And this Nurgle Rhino is a perfect test piece. If things get 'over-weathered', lessons can be learned while still being fairly acceptable to the subject matter. 

Weathering a Nurgle Rhino - adding rust effects around chipped paint

For this stage of the weathering process, I painted a variety of rust hues in and around the chipped paint from the previous step. I started with a black brown hue (Vallejo Model Color/VMC 70.822) which was painted into the central areas of the chipped paint. This was followed by a lighter Chocolate Brown (VMC 70.872) in between the fringes of the exposed red oxide primer and the earlier black brown hue. In this stage's final step, a light rust wash (VMC 505) was applied over the rust hues to both unify the entire colour scheme as well as smooth out colour transitions.    

Nurgle Rhino with chipped paint courtesy of the salt technique

Step 01 - German Cam. Black Brown added to center of primer coat exposed by chipped paint

Step 02 - Chocolate Brown added to edges of the painted black brown center

Step 03 - Light Rust wash used to smoothen transition between primer coat and painted rust hues

For a better view of how the rust effects looked at different stages of the process, kindly refer to the closeup photographs of the upper hull as shown below. 

Chipped paint exposing oxide red primer, which has the colour of anti-rust paint in real world tanks

Black brown hue at the center of the exposed primer coat

Chocolate brown hue between the oxide red edge and black brown center

Light rust wash smooths out transition of between rust hues and unifies the effect's colour scheme

Even after all this, the weathering process on the Nurgle Rhino is just slight over one third of the way in. This begs the question of how much more weathering can a armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) take. It's a Nurgle machine so perhaps that question is moot. However, if this was a present day AFV (as in tanks and such) then there could perhaps be an argument for 'over-weathering'. That being said, what I'm hoping to achieve in the coming weeks is to slowly but surely accentuate a weathered look through targeted additions, rather than heap on loads of wash/paints/pigments lock, stock and barrel. 

Rust effects are far from complete with rust streaks, stains and pools yet to be added

Upper hull is far more weathered than the sides of the Nurgle Rhino

What's up next? I'll be creating rust effects specifically for the metal parts of the Nurgle Rhino. This next step will involve a few new rust hues, some metal pigments as well as a Vallejo weathering product I haven't tried before i.e. the Vallejo Environment Effect Rust Texture (73821).   

Nurgle Rhino - Upper hull view of paint chipping and preliminary rust effects

Nurgle Rhino - Bottom hull view of paint chipping and preliminary rust effects

Back ramp of the Nurgle Rhino has arguably the best 'paint chipping/rust effects' results so far

Throughout the paint chipping process, I had tried to recreate some manner of a peeling paint effect as well. Generally, I wasn't very successful and this peeled paint effect was only noticeable at the back of the Nurgle Rhino (see photo above). When the technique - salt plus paints- does come off, the level of realism achieved way surpasses the effect created by just paints alone. And combined with future weathering with more paints and washes as well as pigments and enamels, I'm hoping it all comes together for a realistic weathered AFV look, which is the whole point of this project after all.