Musings: Easy paintjob on a shipping container (Part 1)

Oh, one of these again. Well, if you get requests to go through how you "did a thing", why not oblige! This time it is the paintjob on my Warsenal Small Shipping Containers that I will go through in this Musings post. The article will be in two parts, the first one on the paintjob itself and the second one (once I can get hold of the battlemat I want for my table..) on weathering them to blend in with the mat.

The theme of these containers are that they are sent from the Forgeworld of Ryza to resupply the Avernii Clan of the Iron Hands Legion. Plasma Weapons? Maybe!

Materials:

Warsenal Small Shipping Containers (Designed for Infinity, repurposed for 30k)

The main painting tutorial will be explained using the doors of the container. However, the top, base and side struts recieved the same paint treatment.

Paints:

Black primer

Greatcoat Grey (P3)

Stonewall Grey (Vallejo Game Color)

Pale Greyblue (Vallejo Model Color)

Astronomican Grey (Citadel OOP)

Hot Orange (Vallejo Game Color)

Miscellaneous:

Gloss Varnish (Vallejo)

Matte Varninsh (Store brand)

Assortment of Transfers

Decal Medium + Fix (Vallejo)

Paintjob:

Step one: Black primer was sprayed on after preparing the surface. My goal here was not for an even coat, as long as it gave enough "grip" for the next stage of the process. The colour gradiation shown here serves to enhance the worn surface look of the finished model.

Step two: A heavy but mottled drybrush of Greatcoat Grey was applied. The drybrush ranged from nigh on solid coat to a light, feathery drybrush in places as seen above. The primer/basecoat should show through on about 45% of the door.

Step three: A heavy drybrush of a 50/50 mix of Stonewall Grey and Pale GreyBlue was applied in random patterns to yet again enhance the shabby look yet further.

Step four: (Remember to take a photo of the doors before assembling the entire shipping container) The markings on the container were made by painting slightly thinned Hot Orange in the pattern shown above. Since the whole point of the paint job is to give the illusion of a worn container, only some care was taken to clean up the orange mess on the bluegrey when slight mistakes were made. 

Step five: The entire container was coated with Gloss Varnish and set to dry. When the Varnish had dried a liberal amount of transfers were applied and the container was yet again set to dry. (As seen above I did work on three at a time).

Step six: (As seen on the two bottom photos above) After matte warnish had been applied and set to cure, a drybrush of Astronomican Grey was applied to make the containers look yet more worn and to reduce the slight shine from the varnish. This drybrush also served to make the orange paint look worn and not like it was freshly painted on the container. You can see the difference between the undrybrushed container on the top down to the one with the final drybrush on the bottom.

The final version of the containers seen above! Well, the paint job at least. The weathering will be done, as mentioned above, whenever I manage to get the battle mat I want. 

I hope this has served as some kind of inspiration to you all. Get painting and do your own weathering to match your boards! Painted terrain can make all the difference to immersion!

//Nevindar