Weathered Metal Paint Effect

I just wrote this up for another forum and figured I'd post it here as well, someone might find it useful



I got tired of looking at the primer grey faceplate on the GH3 guitar today so I decided to paint it up and document the process. The original plan was to paint it up to match my Halo gear but I'm getting bored with weathering black items so I'm going to paint it up like the Mark I Iron Man gear I'm also doing.



Step 1 was the primer, nothing fancy, just regular old grey sandable primer



Step 2, Hammered metal paint:



once the hammered paint was dry I hit it in a few spots with a blowtorch to make it bubble more.



Step 3, the black coat:

First coat



Second coat



I'm using Citadel brand paints for the coloured coats, the black is Chaos Black.



Step 4, removing the black:



Once the black was dry I took most of it off with some 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper (you could use a scouring pad or something similar, I just hand the sandpaper close by)

Depending on the piece you may need to add an additional coat of black, the guitar face doesn't look quite right to me so I'll be adding some more black as well as some browns and green.



Brown coats:



I used both Scorched brown and Bestial brown.

and a little green thrown on:





The green is Goblin green.



Removed most of the paints last night and wound up with this:



It's a little too rusty but that's an easy fix. I managed to get some of the back done as well:







There's still a bit more work to do, mostly hand painted weathering, but it's looking pretty good and it matches the Mark I Iron Man helmet

I'll post some more photos of the rest of the guitar as I finish it.

That's sweet Belakor! Now you got a old rusty guitar with 4 buttons!

looking sweet, i always love the weather look of things

I was searching around for a tutorial like this. Just in time too.



Just a few questions. I plan on doing this with my armor and, instead of the brown coats, will a green coat work just as well?

Also, I have this



spraypaint instead of the hammered silver one. I suppose it should look about the same

I just wrote this up for another forum and figured I'd post it here as well, someone might find it useful



I got tired of looking at the primer grey faceplate on the GH3 guitar today so I decided to paint it up and document the process. The original plan was to paint it up to match my Halo gear but I'm getting bored with weathering black items so I'm going to paint it up like the Mark I Iron Man gear I'm also doing.



Step 1 was the primer, nothing fancy, just regular old grey sandable primer



Step 2, Hammered metal paint:



once the hammered paint was dry I hit it in a few spots with a blowtorch to make it bubble more.



Step 3, the black coat:

First coat



Second coat



I'm using Citadel brand paints for the coloured coats, the black is Chaos Black.



Step 4, removing the black:



Once the black was dry I took most of it off with some 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper (you could use a scouring pad or something similar, I just hand the sandpaper close by)

Depending on the piece you may need to add an additional coat of black, the guitar face doesn't look quite right to me so I'll be adding some more black as well as some browns and green.



Brown coats:



I used both Scorched brown and Bestial brown.

and a little green thrown on:



The green is Goblin green.



Removed most of the paints last night and wound up with this:



It's a little too rusty but that's an easy fix. I managed to get some of the back done as well:







There's still a bit more work to do, mostly hand painted weathering, but it's looking pretty good and it matches the Mark I Iron Man helmet

I'll post some more photos of the rest of the guitar as I finish it.

LastSpartan said:

That's sweet Belakor! Now you got a old rusty guitar with 4 buttons!

Click to expand...

Thanks LS Now I just need the rest of the Mk I suit so I can play GH... do they have the Iron Man theme in Guitar Hero?

link4044 said:

looking sweet, i always love the weather look of things

Click to expand...

I love the weathered metal look, I even weathered my cellphone at one point

Brainal said:

I was searching around for a tutorial like this. Just in time too.



Just a few questions. I plan on doing this with my armor and, instead of the brown coats, will a green coat work just as well?

Also, I have this

spraypaint instead of the hammered silver one. I suppose it should look about the same

Click to expand...

A green coat will work, as will any other color really Though the brown's that I'm using a more of a wash rather than a solid color for a top coat.

That spray will be similar but give a slightly different finish, the hammered paint has something in it (I'm not sure of the specifics) which causes the paint to bubble when it dries which gives a pitted surface, the paint you have looks more like a standard silver paint which will give a smooth finish... both would work for armor though

Then once you've finished with the toothpaste you can spray black on top of that and add more toothpaste to that once the paint has cured.



Then you can add your color coat and, once cured, you can lightly go over the whole piece with a scouring pad to remove all the toothpaste. You should end up with something that looks a little like this:



I don't have any colored aerosols so I can only do the black layer and I've already gone over it quickly with a sharp piece of metal and some sandpaper to get more subtle scratches. I did this in about five minutes so it's not the best but if you take your time it should look pretty good

It was either this or Adam's method. I guess I'll do both and see the winner

Now if you add 6 strings to the guitar, it will be almost as spiffy as mine

Brilliant! The paint scheme is wonderful.
Another really nice weathering method is the one the eavy' metal team used on the ogres.
Wish i still had my ogres i had that weather effect perfected!

Why is this not a Sticky... This is a great tutorial.

That looks SAWHEET Belakor How the hell do you figure this stuff out?! very very cool

great with pics! thanks for shareing!

CPU64 said:

Now if you add 6 strings to the guitar, it will be almost as spiffy as mine

Click to expand...

I had been thinking of doing something similar to yours I think I've got a pretty good idea of how to do it, just need strings and to actually finish some things before I go and start something new

p0rtalman said:

Brilliant! The paint scheme is wonderful.

Another really nice weathering method is the one the eavy' metal team used on the ogres.

Wish i still had my ogres i had that weather effect perfected!

Click to expand...

Those Orgres look pretty sweet, I used to use some of the 'Eavy Metal pieces as reference for my own, same with Black Gobbo... too bad they don't do that anymore.

BlueRealm said:

Why is this not a Sticky... This is a great tutorial.

Click to expand...

Thanks BlueRealm, looks like someone stickied it (thanks to the person that did that, I don't like to sticky my own threads )

Skullcandy Girl said:

That looks SAWHEET Belakor How the hell do you figure this stuff out?! very very cool

Click to expand...

Thanks SKG A creative mind and loads of free time helps me come up with this kind of stuff, I'm not much of a tutorial kind of guy so I just imitate what I see. The idea for the hammered metal finish came from some friends that did some 300 style Spartan helmets, I saw the finish, thought it looked neat and tried to replicate it.

JediStumpy said:

great with pics! thanks for shareing!

Click to expand...

Happy to share, hopefully it'll help people with the weathering.





I'm working on something big at the moment that's probably going to take all the painting/weathering techniques I've picked up over the years, it should be cool.

I think I'll be done within the next month or two (with the first stage at least) and I'll document all the different painting stages in here... Stay tuned...

After a while, I tried this method out. I used the silver (as seen in my last post) and some green. The problem is when I sand it is that it looks like...well, I sanded it. The silver doesn't really show. I can't really remember what grit I'm using. Maybe it's too low.

The sanding method from the first post will only work properly with a hammered base, what it does is remove the black paint on the raised areas of the hammered base and leaves the black in the valleys, which creates the pitted look.

For a regular silver base you'll need to do something like the toothpaste method from a few posts up and/or some light gouging with coarser sandpaper or a sharp object. That will give you a damaged look but wont have the pitting that you get with the hammered base.

Alrighty. Well, I needed more paint anyways (green runs out quick ). I'll pick that up too. I'll see if it all works out. Thanks

Nice but the only promblem is not all of us have a blow tourch to use.

da dude said:

Nice but the only promblem is not all of us have a blow tourch to use.

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The blowtorch is completely optional, it just makes the effect more pronounced. You can get the little butane torches pretty cheap or failing that you can also use a hairdryer or a heat gun





While I'm in here... I've moved all the photos over to Flickr and made the images a little bigger, also fixed the broken posts.

Belakor, underneath the awesome painting tut, I think I see.... a sheep industry magazine? :unsure



Are you or a family member involved in livestock? Or are there really that many sheep in NZ that regular papers carry adverts for anti-scour meds?

Loess said:

Belakor, underneath the awesome painting tut, I think I see.... a sheep industry magazine? :unsure



Are you or a family member involved in livestock? Or are there really that many sheep in NZ that regular papers carry adverts for anti-scour meds?

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You know I hadn't even noticed until you mentioned it, maybe I'm desensitized to it... actually it's probably more because I don't read the paper



I think it was just one of the local papers that I grabbed from the bin, at the time I was reasonably rural so it must have been one of the farming ones. There used to be almost half a dozen different papers that would arrive each week, annoying but it's good when you do a lot of painting and don't want to make a huge mess



There are a lot of sheep here though, evil sheep, they'll take your arm off if you're not careful :eek

Belakor said:

There are a lot of sheep here though, evil sheep, they'll take your arm off if you're not careful :eek

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Be very, very glad that you don't have to help keep the things alive. They're maliciously stupid.



My dad raises sheep, so I wind up helping him take care of them. That's why I actually know what scours are, God help me. It's sort of how I pay rent to use his shop in the winter.



But that's Enough about sheep, I'll let this thread return to teaching about amazing painting skills.



I've actually read this about four times since you first posted it, and never noticed the livestock articles before. :lol