Anyone know of any guides that can help me weather an X-wing?

Anyone know of any guides that can help me weather an X-wing?

Just some tips.

Pin washes enhance detail while overall washes darken paint schemes and 'dirty' up your work.

Artist oils are good for altering the tone of panels. Drawback is they take a long time to dry which is also the plus when working with them. To speed the drying time, place a small amount on a piece of cardboard. The cardboard will soak up some of the linseed oil.

If you use oils to enhance your paint job, use a lacquer based varnish like Testors Dullcote. This prevents the varnish from beading up like water on waxed paper.

You can also use pastels (chalk). Don't get the oil pastels. Scrape or use some sand paper to get chalk dust. This can be brushed on and can change the color of a panel. For instance, with a silver base coat, yellow chalk will give you a golden, transparent color. Think of the color of a motor cycle exhaust. Use blue, purple and orange to vary the color. Needs to be sealed with DullCote.

Paint chipping is also a good way to show age and wear and tear. Check out Buy Painted on YouTube for some nice effects.

One thing to remember when watching some of these How To's is the size of the model they are demonstrating the technique on. You may have to adjust the color or adapt the technique to a much smaller model. What looks great on a 1/24 scale airplane may won't cut it on a 1/270 A-Wing.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Awesome. Thanks!

The only thing I will add to that great post of Stoneface's is....Thank you, man!!

Wonderful advice and you just saved me a ton of money in Tamiya powders too. I have a bunch of pastels and I never, ever thought of that.

Stoneface's list is rather comprehensive and I don't have much to add except for this:

Artist oils are good for altering the tone of panels. Drawback is they take a long time to dry which is also the plus when working with them. To speed the drying time, place a small amount on a piece of cardboard. The cardboard will soak up some of the linseed oil.

The above advice is very much a correct one but I find it much easier to use acrylic colours for this purpose. Here's an example.

Macross is right, acrylics are easier to use and have a lot of advantages over oils but this old dog is more comfortable with old tricks. With longer drying times, less worry about over thinning and enough oil colors to last two life times I tend to use them. One of the many places that acrylics excel is changing panel tones by varying the undercoat color.

Regardless of the color sprayed, acrylics can be put down in very thin, translucent layers. This allows the underlying color to affect the top coat. For example the common method of producing a bright metal finish is to undercoat in gloss black. The gloss provides a smooth surface for the metallic color and the black somehow brightens the paint. By using dark greys, dark blues, etc on selected panels you get nice tonal variations on the finished model. The main drawbacks to this method are that its more time consuming due to masking and waiting for paint to dry AND you have to spray the top coat to see the effect. Using acrylics (or oils) to tint the finished top coat you have an immediate access to the results. Plus, and it's a big plus, if you don't like the effect you can easily remove it with a dampened brush.

One last bit of advice. Before you begin tinting panels make sure you have a gloss or satin finish on your paint. If you have a flat finish the tint will "stain" the color and will be next to impossible to remove if you decide you don't like the effect.

To get your feet wet in the weathering area here's an easy EASY way to get some detail.

After you paint a ship or just on a out of the box ship...

Use a grey or brown color dab a soft sponge from some packing material (I like the ones in malifaux figures as an example)..

Then dab most of that paint OFF the sponge with a paper towel and start stabbing it on the ship.

Go as few or as many as suits you. It leaves tiny traces of dirt or paint chip effects.

Another easy easy way is nuln oil from games workshop it's a black wash like mentioned above...just brush a bunch on and let it dry.

But notice how it pools in the recesses and how it dries. You can then experiment with controlling it better the next time...eventually focusing on spedific areas.

But as a rookie...smear it on and learn how it works

Be forewarned though, nuln oil and it's ilk darken the model, sometimes significantly. If you want to practice, I'd suggest priming some green army men or an old Hotwheels car (assuming you have that kind of thing handy) and trying out some techniques on those first.

Not trying to scare you off of nuln oil; it works well. It just helps to understand how it works before you apply it to your shiny new ships.

Definitely make sure you know what to expect when using shades like Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade versus using a wash like Badab Black or Devlan Mud. The shades are designed to tint the basecoat and also darken the recesses unlike washes which just darken the recesses.

Also, see this thread by Barry Harker for a great and cheap alternative: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/190091-weathering-with-pencilsdirt-streaks-grime-rust-blaster-burns/