Gaslands (3) - Custom Conversions

Firstly Happy Christmas to all, hope you are enjoying the holiday.

As I have been asked a few times now about how I get my vehicles to look the way they do I thought I would a quick post with a brief(ish) how to.

Ok, first up you really don't need to buy any fancy pants parts from the various makers of custom conversion parts, not that you shouldn't - I did, just that you really do not have to, to get a decent looking vehicle. a great source of parts are old plastic Airfix, Tamiya etc kits, you can pick up part built/incomplete kits fairly cheaply, WW2 armoured cars are great for the armoured plates which are full of rivets and hatches etc.

Stage 1

Pick a selection of suitable junk from your bits box and your choice of vehicle:

Stage 2

Get gluing:

Stage 3

Spray Black

Stage 4

Drybrush with a Gun metal colour, I use Vallejo Gunmetal Grey 70863, the parts that will be bare metal get a heavy drybrush, the parts that I will be painting in the cars base colour get a lighter drybrushing:

Stage 5

Paint in your chosen base colour, I water this down to avoid overly obvious brush strokes, don't worry about missing bits or doing a fantastically neat job, in fact scruffy is better.

Stage 6

Rust - dry brush the parts that are meant to be bare metal and selective parts of the paint work, I use GW's Vermin Brown, though I'm not sure if its still called that or not:

Stage 7

Dust - dry brush with a dirt colour, I use Vallejo Tan Earth 70874, heavily drybrush the lower parts and a lighter dry brush on the upper parts, and just wherever dust would look as though it would accumulate.

I also do the underside of the car and the wheels at this point:

Stage 8

Wash- I then lightly wash it I have been using GW's Earthshade but only because I have run out of Vallejo Sepia, although with all the weathering Sepia might be a bit too much.

Stage 9(optional)

Powder - I have only been doing this stage because I have had a load of weathering powders for years, and they have barely been used, this project gave me the opportunity to give them a proper go. But it isn't really necessary at all, and it doesn't add a great deal to the overall effect. however if you do use them, I use these 3:

The bright-ish red you have to be careful with as it is quite bright, but its good for picking out a particularly bad bit of rust, the other two I just dust on dry here and there, blowing off the excess. The multiple coasts of drybrushing in the earlier stages give the powders something to adhere to.

And that's it, really very straightforward, hope its of help to somebody.