Scale Model Rust Effects Tutorial with Acrylics!

Hello friends, hope you are well!

Here’s an overview of the steps and products used to produce the rust base for my MK44 Axeknight, a Hasegawa Models kit from my favourite Maschinen Krieger series. This kit is so much fun! For this project, I am planning to use water based acrylics as much as possible and go airbrush free to help out my friends who haven’t taken the plunge into the airbrush investment yet. Plus I will admit, I also like switching up between hand brushed and airbrushed models just for fun.

If you prefer to watch my Jazz Hands in action, please scroll through to the video below.

Primer

Water based acrylics need help in sticking to plastic, so here an acrylic lacquer based primer was used. Chaos Black from Games Workshop. Isn't it beautiful and so nostalgic! The only thing I didn't likes was... the price... ouch but it's a large can and available all round the world. Easy.

Step 1

Using a large, soft, round brush I've loosely sketched a mix of them paints over the armour. You can see I added more of the brighter colors to the frontal armour and left the back a little darker.

Step 2

Next using a large, course sponge I've literally mashed in more layers of both color and texture. Water based acrylics like this seperate slightly as the transport layer evaporates and we take advantage of that here with changing up our tools. This has many advantages for us, it's fast and inexpensive plus fun too!

Step 3

Finally a quick, careful yet precise round of Spongering ™ with the accent color, in this case a flat orange. No, it does not need to have the word "rust" in the name at all, in fact, I held this bottle up next to the medium orange from the same brand and wouldn't you know it, they look the same. No surprise but it helps to have the names on the bottles and yes I did learn this way back maybe 15 years ago with the Panzer Colors "Rust" Series from Acrylicos Vallejo. Only 3 colors but they worked!

That's the simple rust base for my MK44 done and next up I will share the steps for the base color and ID bands, again all hand painted with water based acrylics.

Hope this is a useful reference and that the video clears up the actual application processes.

Thanks always for the support!

Linc

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