miniatures. · Painting Tutorial

Tutorial – Battle Damage

I started to practice battle damage on one of my tanks during some personal hobby time the other evening and someone asked if I would be able to tell them how I did it. Here is my step by step guide to creating battle damage on vehicles:

Step 1: Basecoat and edgehighlight the tank. Don’t worry about being super duper neat with the edge highlights, those parts that are a bit thicker or smudgy you can create chips with later. I am going to focus on the one panel for the purpose of this tutorial.

IMG_2694Step 2 – Take a piece of sponge and dip it into the highlihgt colour. Wipe most of the paint off, as though you were drybrushing, and spot it over the panel which is to be damaged.

IMG_2695

Step 3: Using the edge highlight colour, paint in sharp, jagged shapes within the panel. Jagged is important. Don’t use soft lines!

IMG_2696

Step 4 – Paint inside the jagged shapes with Dark Brown – I have used Doombull in this case. Do not paint over the edge of the highlight colour, you want a small edge between the base colour and the brown.

IMG_2697

Step 5 – Paint inside the brown with a darker brown – here I have used Dryad Bark.IMG_2698

Step 6 – Paint another layer of darker brown inside what you have done already. I have used Dryad bark mixed with Black 50/50.IMG_2699

Step 7 – Use Seraphim Sepia to paint lines of rust from the lowest point of the damaged space. This creates the effect of running gunk from the battle damage.

IMG_2700

Step 7 – This effect can be used over decals as well.IMG_2702

I hope that helps! I would love to see people’s attempts at battle damage if they decide to try it out.

40K · Age of Sigmar · blue · miniatures.

The Repulsor

A few weeks ago, I went on a painting course run by Seige Studios. I learned a great many things, some of which I have been putting to good use already. Little tweaks to make my work more efficient and other little housekeeping tips that have had significant impact. However one of the core teaching points of the course was battle damage and decals, neither of which I have done since the course. I wanted to change this and happened to spot the Primaris Repulsor in the cabinet looking all grey and sad. Normally, I don’t do battle damage on the Ultramarines however I need something to practice on and it seemed perfect.

First job was to airbrush the base coat onto it:

There were a couple of splatters with the airbrush, but I wasn’t upset about that. It would give me an idea of where to put the battle damage while I was working meaning they’d not show while I was finished. My next step was to edgehighlight the whole thing. This took a while and again, I made several mess ups while I was doing it. These will also be turned into rust spots and other battle damage.

When done, I started on the front of the tank. I don’t have any large Ultramarine decals, but I have some smaller ones. I placed one on the front and then followed the steps I had written down while on the course.

tank 2

In the picture, you can see some of the places towards the top of the tank where the edge highlighting is a bit too thick – this will become damage when I get around to adding some more to the vehicle.

It might be some time before I do so however, I am finding that personal projects are taking a bit more of a back seat while I work on commissions and miniatures for selling. Those are what pays the bills after all. I think my evenings will be for personal things and learning, while the day is for work miniatures. Either way, I find I am very much enjoying the amount of painting I am doing and even those miniatures I have painted more than once are fun.