My process for all things oil weathering

Oil paint is a great way to get some real world weathering on to a model. I consider it to be the most transformative stage to bring a model a lot of depth and realism.

There are loads of techniques you can use with oils. A few of them I have covered with my Char B1 Bis.

My process for all things oil weathering.

I always start with a dark pin wash. The idea is that you want the wash to pull around all of the raised details and into panel lines using capillary action. So it is best to start with a fresh coat of gloss and no other interference from other techniques.

Once it was all applied I took a clean brush that has been dipped into white spirits and clean away any tide marks and excess wash.

Pin wash on casting marks.

Pin wash for bolts and seam lines.

Pin wash for every small detail.

I try to weather my models as it would happen naturally in the wild, so next I added an oil dot filter.

This helps to create some tonal variation as well as a slightly faded weather beaten look. I like to keep to similar colors as the paint job, so for this on I used sap green, medium yellow, yellow ochre, burnt umber and zinc white. I used more white from the top down, to give it a sun faded look. I dotted all of the paints on randomly. I then used a clean flat brush dipped into white spirits to steak the paint down the surface, as it would happen naturally with gravity, until the streaks were no longer visible.

Heavy oil dot filter for the engine deck.

Light colors for the turret.

Creating different tones for the large panels.

Darker oils near the running gear.

Streak downwards until it's all blended.

Next up was weather, grease and grime streaks. This is where the transformation really starts to kick in!. For this I dotted black and white oil paint on along the top of the vertical surfaces, took a clean brush dipped in white spirits and streaked downwards. I wanted the streaks to be quite prominent and visible and concentrated them to under details such as the greasing ports, vents, bolts and along the tops of panel edges.

Creating grime streaks.

Grease and oil from the wheel caps.

Lots of grime streaking down the front plate.

Light streaking for the turret.

For the top decks I used a mix of black and burnt umber then dapped it around details, corners and along the turret ring. I used a clean brush but this time left it dry and I began to blend the paint into the surface. Fading it away from the edges giving the image of built up grime in the corners.

Turret ring grime.

A blend of black and burnt umber oil paint.

Grime blended into the corners.

Blending with a large clean brush.

Exhaust grime.

Commanders periscope ring.

Lastly for my oil weathering I added some dark rust. Using burnt umber I added it to mostly the dark metal chipping I had previously done. I used a fine brush as well as a small sponge to give some random speckling to mimic growing rust. Some of the rust spots I turned into streaks using a brush dipped in white spirits.

Streaking rust with white spirits.

Rust applied with a fine brush.

Rust added with sponge for random spotting.

Heavy rusting for the exhaust covers.

Some rust streaking on the sides.

The oil weathering stage was now finished and to protect all of that work and to take the glossy sheen away I sealed the entire model in a clear coat with Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear. Once this was done the work was now fully visible and non reflective which was a very rewarding step.

Clear flat applied.

All details visible after flat coat.

Moving on I will continue the weathering stages using acrylics and some specialized products to complete the model. Stay tuned!

After oils and the clear flat coat.