Sup nerds. If you’re like me, you have adult onset diabetes from too many bags of Munchies, and you also like painting slightly homoerotic hunks of plastic and metal. I recently got onto the Ork bandwagon after Black Reach was released, and suddenly realized I’d have to paint things that were actually dirty. I had read over the blogs and guides and tips like you’re doing now, and had seen one of the tools used by military modelers (or “scale” modelers as they like to be called on their shitty forums) was weathering powders. Now, I consider myself a completely decent painter by all standards, and like trying out new techniques provided that are easy and cheap. So what the hell are weathering powders?

Take a high quality pastel chalk used in a lot of art projects and sketching, grind it up to a very fine powder, stick it in a bag, and then charge the shells of human beings that buy them from you after you’ve renamed them from orange to something catchy like Rustgut Ochre and you’ve essentially got weathering powders, or pigment powders, whatever the fuck you want to call them. There are actually a few suggestions saying you can grind down art chalks from craft stores and create similar products, but I haven’t tried it. I got these at a choo choo store! It’s actually a decent bargain. Most are sold in kits of 4 powders, with a general color palette like rust, grease, or mud themed shades for roughly 10 dollars. When you think about it, that’s like 2 Games Workshop paints, so you won’t hear me complaining.


The powders themselves are extremely fine, but also concentrated with pigment. This means that you not only don’t need much of it when you use it, but it’s also easy to scoop some out and work with. I’ll usually get some out with a knife and tap any excess off directly back into the bag. Be careful when handling, as they will stain skin and clothes if allowed to set in.

There’s two ways of using the powders I’ve seen, I’m sure there’s more, so please feel free to comment any tips you’ve got. There’s the dry way, and the wet way. Lets look at some goddamn scythes.

For example purposes, I slapped on white and a quick boltgun metal coat. The powders are essentially enhancers, and will look better on a finished model, but this’ll work for here. Like I said, there’s the dry way and the wet way. It’s like sex: the dry way is subtle and lighter and the wet way is more dramatic and sloppier. For the dry way, simply get a little powder on your pallete. Take a completely dry brush and lightly dab it through the powder while dragging it, apply more pressure if you want to pick up more pigment.

The wet method is more complex. For it, I like to apply a very small amount of water to a detail brush and get a tiny amount of powder on the tip. It will form a small clump at the end, simply dab that on your palette. Believe me, this will be enough. At this stage, it will look like slightly dried out paint, as it essentially is. In this state, it will be very strong and overpower any paint it goes over, or apply more water to thin it. Doing so will create a wash, which will shade the model rather than repaint it. Here’s an example of the dry method with the deepest shade I have.

As you can see, the dry method is almost like a drybush that evenly covers the model, not just the edges, the the metal shows through underneath the entire blade. The wet method however is applied more like paint, and completely covers whatever color was underneath. In this case, the boltgun metal has been totally covered. The shades stack like regular paints too, so I simply applied them darkest to lightest.

Now these babies look like they were blessed by Nurgle himself! Wait, what? God damn I’m a nerd… my youth pastor was right! Anyhoo, the wet method is the top scythe and the dry method the bottom one. The wet method gives a more striking and recent feel to the rust where as the dry method is not only more subtle, but makes the blade appear more ancient and less oozing. Brittle, almost. Here’s two examples of them being used on my fukken Orks, son!

The dry method exclusively was used on the rokkit launcha, followed by some random touch ups with mithril silver and it was ready to go. For the Nob’s ‘uge choppa, the edges were done lightly with the dry method and the runny trails of rust were using the wet method. The faint waft of Gamer Fuel-flavored Mountain Dew and spicy Dorito’s smell on the air must mean you hams want to know what good the black powder is for, and if they can be used on anything besides faggot orks. First, fuck you, orks rule. And second, it’s got it’s uses. I use it on gun barrels to create a more realistic powder burn effect, and it’s also good for toning down colors that might be a little too bright for your liking, like the loincloth on the Nob. Also, heavily thinned down, it creates exactly the same effect as a wash of Badab Black.

This bastion and defense line were essentially drybrushed with the standard codex gray / fortress gray combo and accented with the weathering powders. The black was used heavily on these. In conclusion, I find that I now incorporate the powders heavily in my painting repertoire what with the orks I’m doing, and can see how they could be used with great effect by about any army out there (‘cept Eldar, they’re too goddamn pretty). Long story short: totally worth the money. And honestly goons, how often can you say that in this hobby?

Tags: bastion, orks, powder, scythe, weathering, weathering powder

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Painting, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.