Weathering a Train Thingy

So I wanted to give weathering a shot. I've done very little of it, and the results were pretty bad overall. The thing is, while I kinda had an idea of what I'm supposed to do, I never wanted to learn on a painted model. So I bought a terrain set to play around with!

For this model I wanted to try painting a model all rusty (trying out rust powders, enamels, and normal paints).

Then I'd use AK Washable Agent to create paint that can wear off easily, paint the model yellow:

Then load up water into rough brushes, sponges etc, and rub this weakened paint off!

Finally, more pigments, enamel streaking agents to make the model looks like it was sitting in the rain for the while.

None of these steps worked out completely. The washable agent is very thick, so it had to be watered down a lot to make color blending possible. However, all that water made previous layers of paint loosen. In the end I applied a very, very thick layer of yellow/brown, and used a very soft brush to drybrush lighter yellow and dab darker brown without stripping previous layers. It didn't really work out too well. Lesson learned: use an airbrush to apply paints with the washable agent.

The rust, while looking great initially, came off when I started removing the yellow paint, so there's that. The arm is still rusty, but whenever I stripped the yellow stuff, I also stripped the rust under it, leaving a pristine metal. Lesson learned: varnish before applying paints with the washable agent.

After that, I was imagining a chipped paint look, not severely scratched, but that's fine. Not all scratches make sense.

Finally, I was trying to use the AK enamel streaking paint with white spirit to emulate rain streaks and it didn't really work: The streaking paint can leave a nice brown streaks, but they're too dominant. White spirit is then used to dissolve the streaks and soften them. However, what was happening more often than not is that I'd just remove the streaks instead of softening them. Next time around I'll have to try a different method. I think people use inks for this?

Oh, and I applied a transfer for the first time. There's a small "XII" on the rear right. That was very easy!

Anyway, yeah. Painting with non-acrylic paints and powders is definitely different. Even though no step achieved what I was imagining it would, the model looks amazing at the end, and I'm very happy with it! And, with a hair dryer to accelerate paint drying, it took ~6 hours to paint start to finish!