Painting and weathering - Hairspray & Salt - Terrain crate Gang Warzone from Mantic - Part 2

Following on from the discovery from Goblin Games and unboxing of this kit in part 1 HERE I got right on and started painting. I had no real idea how to paint this terrain other than that I wanted to get it done fairly quickly as I was excited about putting it together and playing with it!

I turned to the dads and asked their advice and Dave came up with the idea of using Halfords car paints for ease of use and cheapness (£6.50 a can). Rich and Steve came up with a colour scheme of mustard yellow - kind of like the colour scheme on the box. I haven't got an airbrush though so Dave suggested to use the hairspray and salt weathering method instead. Now I haven't done this before so thought it would be exciting to give it a go!

Firstly I split the bits up into four parts and blu-tacked them to 4 pizza boxes - 2 x wall panels, 1 x floor panels and accessories and 1 x metal bit so that will just be sprayed black then Leadbelcher.

Laying the terrain out ready for spraying

Then I sprayed the bits their basecolour - Chaos black for the metal set and Vauxhall Brazil Brown as a base colour (you'll see why) for all of the pieces that will end up Rover Sand Glow yellow.

The Halfords paints

With Car paints there is no need for a primer as the paint sticks fine to the plastic which saves money and time and so the Brazil Brown went on first as my base colour. It is really important to get the right shade and colour for the basecolour as this is what will show through the lighter top colour (my Rover Sand Glow) when the salt comes off.

The first colour goes on - Vauxhall Brazil Brown

Luckily it was a beautiful February day in Manchester and so I got a tarpaulin sheet out on the patio and did my spraying there. Everything dried in about 10 mins in the sun - perfect!

Cheap hairspray and rock salt

Then for the scary bit that I haven't done before... I grabbed a big tin off sea rock salt from the cupboard and had already purchased a 95 pence can of hairspray from B & M bargains (It was next door to Halfords!) and headed out to the patio...

I sprayed the pieces liberally with hairspray so there was a visible wet coat on the terrain. Then sprinkled salt so that it settled across the terrain pieces and then sprayed a light coating of hairspray over the top again. Who knew if this would work but it seemed like a good idea at the time!

Note: After doing this on the first side of terrain I really liked the results but I still tried it slightly differently on the other side. On the second side I was more targeted with the salt - around certain areas -, used more salt and also used the smaller crystals as well as the larger ones for different effects. I think the second sides I did were better and would definitely do it this way again next time.

Sprayed and salted

After waiting for the hairspray to dry, about 10 mins again in the sun, On went the Rover Sand Glow.
This is much darker than the pictures suggest, and much more orange when not in bright sunlight. I think it looks better than in the pictures actually. Anyway I made sure to not fully cover the terrain pieces with solid yellow and streaked across them instead so that the brown was showing through in some areas for a faded more realistic look.

Streaky Rover Sand Glow

Streaky Rover Sand Glow

Streaky Rover Sand Glow

Getting to this point hadn't taken very long at all, probably an hour and a half with drying time. I had arranged the pieces on the card, painted both sides brown, hairsprayed, salted and painted one side yellow. It definitely hadn't taken a lot of effort either. However, the next bit did take a while.

I got a warm bowl of water, a 10 pence toothbrush and a plate and set to work on each piece - rubbing the salt off in the bowl of warm water then scrubbing with the toothbrush all over taking bits of yellow paint off where I thought looked good.

Brushes and bowls

My first ever piece of terrain using this method was below and looked quite cool I thought!

My first piece

I soon realised that depending on how much salt, where it was placed and how I scrubbed paint off with a toothbrush or fingernails it produced different effects and again when I did the second side of the terrain I think it looked better than the first.

Finished the salting process

Finished the salting process

Finished the salting process

After scrubbing down and making a mess then doing the other side I think that the whole process probably took about 5 hours with drying time. Labour wise only the salt removing and scrubbing part took any effort but for approximately 100 pieces that are now painted and weathered and probably could be used as they are, I would say that 5 hours is pretty good!!

As always though, even though I think that the pieces look really cool, I need to do a bit more before I begin to see if they fit together without any glue and look good as a structure together. Consequently I have just started the process of adding in some details.

First off I will add some Leadbelcher to any metal (See below for the beginning of this process), wash it with nuln oil then rust it with I don't know what yet. Then I was thinking of drybrushing some Abaddon black and scorched brown around the damaged areas as smoke damage before adding in some red somewhere to break up the yellow/orange colour a bit. I'm kind of making it up as I go along so I guess i'll see what happens as the terrain develops.

Starting the detailing with the metal

At the moment I am still loving the look and quality of this terrain and really happy about my paint job so far. Of course I'll post another blog post when I have completed some of this work and keep sharing my thoughts on what I think of the terrain at each stage so keep checking back!

If you have any ideas about what else I can do with this terrain then do please let me know.

Until then see you soon,

James
















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