Weathering Colors

The aging of a surface as a discipline of its own

Equipment outdoors never stays as it arrived from the factory. The sun draws the depth out of the paint, rain carries dust down into the joints, exhaust gases leave a dark streak behind them and a scuffed edge bares the metal, which rusts within a few weeks. This offering is not about the base coat but about that second phase, in which a model only becomes convincing.

The make-up of the package

Inside lie fifteen covering tones and a matte varnish. The basis is made by a faded white, a dark green, a sand yellow and a dark earth, and to them are added a mahogany brown, two grays including a dark tank gray and a sea gray, a burnt earth and a sand. The weathering itself is taken care of by two rusts, one of which has a metallic cast, and a metallic black for exhausts and track runs. The flesh tone is left for the figure standing beside a dusty vehicle.

How to layer

The procedure has a direction, from the top down and from the dry to the wet. First comes the fading of the areas that see the sky, then the streaks of running water, and only at the end the deposit of earth on the running gear. Rust is laid on sparingly and only where it makes sense to look for it: on welds, the edges of covers and around scuffed rivets. The matte varnish at the end evens the gloss out and keeps the dusty cast even after the model has been handled.

What it suits

Its use is not tied to one kind of equipment. The same palette will serve a tracked vehicle, a truck, an aircraft in field conditions and a construction machine in a diorama.

One rule holds without exception: less tends to be more. A model on which the weathering is spread everywhere equally strongly loses depth and comes across as dirty rather than worn. The best result comes from a few places where the aging is marked and large quiet areas between them.