hey guys! welcome to weathering 101 which is dry brushing. the good thing about dry brushing is that it's effects are not permanent unlike battle damage, and can be easily washed off with its specific thinner. so what is dry brushing? dry brushing is a painting technique that adds extra details on your gundam like burns, scratches, rusting, and many more. this is also accepted as battle damage, though its not the very serious ones. dry brushing, takes more time than an ordinary paint job, but it is very useful in making your model look more realistic.

materials:

>small flat tipped brush

>acrylic paints ( black ) it depends on your wanted effect

>piece of paper/ cloth

>cotton buds

>thinner

>graphite pencil

in this tutorial i would only be using  black just as an example on how dry brushing works, but there are a lot more pigments used in dry brushing.

first, shake the paint bottle a couple of times before opening.  when opened there should be a small amount of paint stored on the cap.

using the paint stored on the cap, dip your brush adding a little paint on the tip.

since we are not going to use most of it, rid the excess by dabbing your brush on a piece of paper or cloth.

keep wiping until paint is barley, or not coming of it.

to know if its about right, it should look more like the one on the right side.
(the lighter one)
once thats done, you can proceed to brushing the piece.

lightly brush the edges and the curves of the part, you must do this multiple times before you actually get to see the effect on the piece.
get this right, and it should look like this.


tah-dah! master piece. it looks pretty rough huh? so for the people who don't really like this kind of look (like me), you could "fix" it a bit, by doing the step below.


start by dipping a cotton bud in a dish of thinner and carefully smudge the paint about the piece towards the flow of gravity. this would slightly tint the whole piece making the weathering smoother and even.


make sure to focus on the damage on the part before you proceed on weathering anything else, because it's damage right? try making it stand out more by starting the dry brushing from there.


the final step, using a graphite pencil, shade the edges of the piece to give it a metallic shine.


and thats it, try experimenting on other colors for the dry brush technique like: black for burns, silver for scratches, and brown for rust, make your own combinations to make your gundam look more interesting!

there are many kinds of ways to do battle damage, and I'm going to be teaching you guys how to do an easy and simple battle damaging process for your gundams. though i usually do the cutter type battle damage, there is also what i call melting. melting are used for slightly small bullet holes that actually got to melt through the gundam's armor.

materials:

>barbecue stick/ nail

>candle

>lighter (or anything you could use to light the candle up)

>cutter

so to start this tutorial, find a logical spot for this type of battle damage. because you surely can't have bullet holes under a shield right? so that is step one, find an area to damage.

lets start with prepping the materials that would be used in this tutorial.



light up a candle and burn the point of a barbecue stick.


blow the flame off the stick once it starts to glow red. if its not red, your wrong.


 while the tip is still hot, carefully pierce the area where you want the damage to be done.


slowly remove the stick once the hole's depth is to your liking.
remove any excess melted plastic and clean off and remaining amber.



using a cutter, draw some scratch lines in the direction where the bullet came from.
(if its was shot from the left, make scratches on the left side of the hole)

finished.


 more bullet holes on the shoulder armor. once properly dry brushed, you will see the bullet's effect.

finished product.