Seems like it’s about time I put out another one of these. Before I start, I’d like to mention that there are many many ways to paint rust depending on the material/effect you’re going for, and that this is just how I usually go about it.
These are the paints and brushes I’ll be using for this tutorial, as well a cup of water and a paper towel for cleaning off the brushes.
I chose a pale blue for the base color firstly because it contrasts well with the browns and oranges of the rust, and secondly because generally old rusty things have washed out colors.
Step One:
Prime your mask and paint on your base color, making sure you have an even coat with no streaks.
Step Two:
Using the edge of a wide brush, stipple on dark brown patches where you would like the rust to appear. Make sure the edges are rough looking, and to put in a couple of tiny patches (you don’t necessarily have to even make large patches of rust, depending on how degraded you want your mask to appear).
Step Three:
Using the tip of your smaller brush, stipple a lighter brown inside of the dark brown. You should only have a small amount of paint on the end of the brush, wiping off most of the paint before you apply it.
Step Four:
Pretty much the same as step three, but with a bright orange instead of brown.
Step Five:
It is possible to leave the rust as it is at this point, but let’s make this mask really grimy. Using an ink or a very thinned down dark brown, paint some drip marks coming from the rusty patches.
Step Six:
All that’s left is to put a wash over the whole mask using the same ink from the last step to get a layer of dirt/grime on the mask.
And that’s how you add a fair bit of wear and tear to your mask. Happy painting!
I got a dumb question but do you know how to make metal masks?
If it’s making them metal through painting, I just use metallic paint. If it’s making them out of solid metal that’s a bit outside my area of expertise, but there’s a great tutorial over on BZP that tells you how to forge your own masks.
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