Rust effect tutorial 1: Rust

In the case of the M41, I paint it first with various Tamiya acrylics to get the rust tones:

XF-64 Red brown, XF-68 NATO Brown, XF-10 Flat Brown, XF-9 Hull Red, XF-7 Flat Red, X-6 Orange, X-24 Clear Yellow and XF-1 Flat Black.

For better details you can paint some area with a sponge.

Always remember where you putted the areas you want to show when you will be removing the camo paint.

Once it is dry, I used the Chipping effect from AK Interactive, you can also use the same product from Ammo or Vallejo. If you don't have it you can use hair spay.

If you are using hair spray you must do first a test on an old platic kit of sheet of plastic as some hair spay can react with the paint.

I'm covering the areas I want the paint to be removed with the Chipping liquid, you can apply it with an hairbrush or a brush. Once you can see it is dry, you must apply the camo or paint layer including the mapping directly.

In the case of this M41, left outside for many years, I used various Tamiya acrylics green tones as:

XF-5 Flat Green, XF-67 NATO Green, XF-71 Cockpit Green and XF-2 White.

Once you can see it is dry, you can start to work on the chipping effect, using water and a brush. Your brush must be wetted and not flooded with water. Apply water on the surface, wait a little bit and brush the surface from top to bottom. You can also use a toothpick or a thin pin for other kind of chips.

The areas more damages or more worn must have more chips than other areas.

On the next step, I'm using various enamel washes and grime.

If I'm using enamels and not acrylics or water based products is simple to understand, the base is acrylic, if I'm working with acrylics it won't react the same way, also the acrylics have a faster driying time than the enamels.

You can use already prepared washes or you can do them your self with enamel colours and thinner.

Finaly I'm putting some rust tone pigments (light, medium and deep) with and old brush on some areas.

If you want to fix the pigments, you can use diluted mat varnish.

The final result:

That's it for this one, if you have any question just ask.

Don't forget if you have an old model try it first on it.

Remember less is more, don’t over do the effect or you can ruin your model.