Reaper Miniatures - Shipping Container - Fading and Rusting

I had a bit of an extended weekend and managed to work in some time on the Reaper Miniatures Shipping Container. The first thing to do was to start the chipping process. The chipping fluid had been applied between my base coat of reddish brown and the red layer. I think I waited much to long. You should do this as soon as the top layer drys. Since I waited to long it was hard to create the chipping effect, and when I did it went all the way down to the primer coat and in some cases down to the plastic. Not quite what I was hoping for but not a tragedy either.

This is where my last session ended

Using water and an old brush to start scrubbing the sides.

Here you can see some of the effects. The top layer has pulled away but so did my red brown layer, you are seeing the brown liner I used as a primer and in some places the bare plastic (lower right hand side).

Once I had that effect more or less completed it was time to fad the paint job. It was a pretty bright red coming out of the bottle and I need to tone that down a bit. For this I used some Golden Fluid Acrylic paint, Titanium White, and thinned it way down to a wash. I think I applied this over the red and it served to "fade" it down to a more sun exposed red. Worked out very nice, of course I forgot to take pictures of that part of the process. I didn't get any shots in until I had applied my first couple of rust washes.

I start with a dark rust wash from AMMO, and followed that on with a light rust wash, also from AMMO. At that point I had to pack up for the evening. So the next series of pictures show both the fading and the rust coats.

You can really see the difference in the red here. These containers can really be exposed to the sun for long periods of time when they are onboard ships or sitting in the dockyards.

While normally February in Colorado is in the mid 40s or so, with 50 degree temperatures not being uncommon, this year has been unusually warm. I think we hit a high of 80 one day. I took advantage of the warm weather and worked outside. Especially nice since I was working with primarily with enamel paints and pigments with mineral spirits. Oh and don't worry I'm sure we will be paying for this warm weather shortly with a big snow fall.

In the next step I really combined working with the enamel rusting washes and the pigments. I used the washes as a base and then streaked the pigments down over the top of the washes. With the warm weather everything dried pretty quickly. I usually work with a combination of the pigments and mineral spirits which allows me to vary the consistency from a wash to a paste or apply it dry and add the mineral spirits with a brush. The nice thing about working with the pigments is that I can go back and adjust them even after they have dried. I also discovered that its hard to take pictures outside of this kind of thing, the winter light is very harsh at this altitude.

Adding layers, you an see areas on the top that haven't dried yet.

This is after all the washes and the rust orange pigment from Secret Weapon has been applied.

Here you can see the lighter "fresher" rust being worked in.

My primary "paints" for this stage. From AMMO are the streaking dark and light rust washes. I applied these first. I followed that with the Secret Weapon orange rust and then the MIG new rust. You can make out the can of mineral spirits in the back.

Of course it looks like I managed to go overboard a bit and there is very little left of the red container. Sometimes playing with the rust is just to much fun! I may go back and rub off some of the rust on the sides and ends to see if I can restore at least a few patches of the red. I'm working out the designs I want to use on the sides for the graffiti now as well. I'm going to do both sides with some more mural like graffiti and just some tags on the end panels I think.