First Steps Into Weathering Powders

by | May 29, 2012

My 3000 point Blood Angels collection is nearing full-on completion, with almost everything fully painted. There is, however, one thing that I have been putting off for a few years now. Weathering. For some reason I've always been scared of dirtying up the minis I've lovingly spent hours painting. I took a baby step a few months ago with the 'chip' effect I've been applying, but now its time for the big leap: weathering powders. I'll be using Forge World Light Earth in this article.

So, I read a number of tutorials, checked out articles on sites like FTW, and settled on testing two methods. First rubbing alcohol, and second spray varnish. I was very dubious with the spray varnish methods as have been burned (well, ghosted) in the past. Lets make this quick and say the rubbing alcohol didn't turn out well... It was probably my fault: two higher purity of alcohol or too much sloshed on to the model, I don't know to be honest. It basically melted the paint off.

So I moved on to spray varnish, simple GW Purity Seal. Here is my original test piece:

Spray Varnish Test
As you can see some of the weathering powder blew off but most of it stuck. I was VERY happy that there was no ghosting present, although I did take extra care only blasting it with the short bursts at long range. The powder stuck well and good. A success! Now for the leap...


I wanted to go for a 'dust' like effect rather than caked on mud, so applied the powder fairly lightly to the model. Above you can see what the powder looked like straight after I applied it. And now for the spray varnish:

First Pass
Hmm, most of the powder blew off. Doesn't look bad though. I wonder what it would look like if I went over the model with some more powder? This time I proper caked it on. And here's the results:

Second Pass
Much better! Still not exactly the 'dusty' appearance I wanted, but good enough and WAY better than my previous attempts at painting it on (the reason I was worried about weathering in the first place). I also noted the powder tends to look a lot better in crevices rather than flat surfaces like rhino hulls (not as much blows away). Here is a blurry pic of the treads, which look a lot more weathered:


All in all, a fairly successful adventure into the world of weathering powders. Now I need to grab some Black Soot to do those exhausts....

Darth Meer