Metal Oxydation

Note This article is written by Allan C, and he is the only one responsible for all the paintjob that may shown in this article. I translated the article from french and tried to do my best in keeping with the spirit in wich this article was written, but despite that I may have made a few mistakes in translating the article so if you see any problem please feel free to PM me. Metal Oxidations I really like to paint metals, and I find that old metals, some rusted iron or oxidized copper is a lot more attractive then a perfect metal with just some highlights and shading. There are many ways to do oxidations, that is because rusts itself has many different tones. Even more so if you’re painting a fantasy mini where you can easily imagine that the weapon is done out of some imaginary metal and go wild with your improbable oxidation. It is also a good thing to have some example to look at, it could be a picture or some rusted tool you have lying around. Whatever the type of oxidation that I’m trying to represent, the painting technique stays the same. I do it by successive washes, so that I tone little by little a part, then once the color is well applied I move on to an other color who can be very different from the first one, That is where the different tones take their charm. Or I can also highlight directly after the first color. Rust: The colors I need are: bestial brown, snakebite leather, blood red, chaos black and some sunburst yellow if you really want to make it look good. I start by applying some juices (very diluted washes) of snakebite leather, about two or three times, the border of the snakebite can be retouched with 1 or 2 juice of sunburst yellow. I then go on to applying the bestial brown; since it’s the dominating color I put on about 10 layers, and sometimes more if I feel like it. I then do a mix of around 3/4 part bestial brown for 1 part blood red, and I put around 5 to 10 layers of that color. And finally the last mixes will be done with the last color (bestial and red) plus some black, the maximum proportion of black in the mix should be about 1/2 the mix. Of course each color you put down should be placed on a smaller portion then the one before or it serves no purpose!! You can take it even farther by putting some points of color that you’ll work to make it look like reliefs, or even the grainy look of the rust. But you can also do that in sculpture. Copper oxidation (green/grey) The colors that are used are: catachan green, skull white, codex grey and some kind of green blue color (turquoise like). I proceed, as with the rust by adding successive washes, here the first color is catachan green. Once it has been well applied, I’ll start working with my other three colors. I applie in different places the blue green to create a nice shade then I do the same with the grey, this will tone down the green . It’s time to highlight the green by adding some white; this is done by blending, adding more and more white to the green, ending with a mix of 3/4 white and 1/4 green. You should now have something that isn’t too bad. I managed to do both on this one!! You can see some rust and some copper oxidation on is weapon. I know it’s totally improbable but it looks good. The important here is to show you how it looks like.