Crimson Fists Dreadnought- Weathered.

Hello everyone. Sorry for the lack of posts recently, looking for a new job and other multitudinous 'life administration' tasks have been getting in the way of my beloved wargaming. My recent painting activity has centered around trying to finish my Crimson Fists, and they would have been finished by now if i hadn't decided to start experimenting with weathering techniques.

My thinking is that, as the galaxies elite warriors, Space Marines would 'honour their wargear' and would look pretty immaculate at all times, until that is, they contact the enemy. It is said that the best battle plan will not survive contact with the enemy, and the same could be said of immaculately buffed power armour! As my Crimson Fists force is set just after the Rynns World disaster it is meant to depict a band of desperate warriors who have just had their Fortress Monastery destroyed and are fighting a valiant guerilla war behind enemy lines in order to link up with their allies in New Rynn City. That's where the weathering comes in. I wanted the Dreadnought to look as if having slogged hundreds of miles across the grassy plains, through skirmishes and plain bad luck.

The painting technique is the same as outlined below for the Tactical Marines, with the addition of paint chips done by adding Codex Grey areas with spots and scratches of Boltgun Metal in the middle. The grey is meant to represent undercoat/ primer that is exposed by bashes and repeated contact and the metal represent the metal underneath (of course). I also brushed on ochre and grey pastels, you can get these from any art shop and scrape a small amount onto a palette then use an old brush to sweep the 'muck' into corners and recesses, especially on the lower parts of the model. I'm fairly pleased with the results but with weathering part of the trick is to know when to stop- overcook it and your model can end up looking like a spawn of nurgle.