Rattlecan gun-fu on my Warhammer 40K modular space ship interior or industrial terrain (part 3)

Yesterday saw the start of Dutch spring with temperatures reaching a scorching 20 degrees (Celcius which equals 68 Fahrenheit. Yes, I'm not a summer person so don't get me started on 30C+ peaks in high summer! Anyway with a late-afternoon hour to waste I had a chance to do some rattlecan gun-fu in the garden instead of in the shed. Who can say no to an escape from poisonous fumes (although my paint filtering mask helps there (hint hint to everyone not owning one of these)). As an added bonus working outside adds a chance of unwanted sand and leaves falling on your terrain. A chance at some chaos! Nice! I went for it. For the curious here is the end result of an about an hour of spraying with rattlecans.

Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only rust.

I started off with the traditional discovery that all my primer was gone. So I had to take a quick trip to the paint store. For terrain I use black MoTip Primer, if you know where to look these large rattlecans are available for somewhere between 5 and 6.5 euro. A price that is rather more attractive than the finer brands we all know and love...As I was frustrated by the delay caused by running out I stocked up and got three. I also rummaged through my collection of cheap rattlecans for some colors to use here. Most of these are impulse buys from 'this color is too ugly' sales, some others have been donated to me by friends and family. Here is a snap of the color selection for this project so far (and yes I need to clean up my work space (again)).

Color selection completed, now let's resume ignoring the state of the work-area in my shed.

I started out covering everything in a big fat coat of black primer. The terrain is reasonably light on detail so overdoing the priming should not cause too many problems. Covering the squirt gun parts turned out to be difficult, I should remember to put some sanding paper tot the others before working with them. I also completely forgot to prepare the polystyrene beneath the generators for priming. I think I lucked out there as the resulting polystyrene melt seems to have added a bit of character to the block (in stead of destroying that piece of terrain).

Black primer applied. Instantly taking away the toy look.

As for the basic terrain colors, I wanted dark browns to show of more oranges and browns I will apply later for that extremely rusted look. I used three colors of brown two high gloss ones (will dull that down later) and a bit of Mournfang Brown I still had standing around. This part of the process is basically spray, relax, don't thinking and go for unequal coverage so the different colors mix.

I know gun-fu! 

Let's make that sound more spectacular: I went for rattlecan gun fu. Put the tiles down on the grass (remembered to cover the grass to avoid domestic trouble) took two colors and channeled my inner John Woo. I flipped around doing front aerials, side aerials, cartwheels and somersaults all the while shooting paint at my project. I am not lying about this (*cough*). With the hard part over I focused on the suspicious bubbling fat. Knowing I should go for the precision of the airbrush I shrugged and grabbed my Caliban green and some neon colors. First a reasonably careful basecoat.

I should've used an airbrush, but I was lazy (and it feels ok).

Then I applied a few sprays of neon green followed by even fewer neon yellow. And there (I think) is the answer as to why you would want neon paint.

Let's not take a bath in that. 

I had to reapply this paint over the course of the evening as it dries up awfully. But from a distance it looks quite nice (perhaps appropriately awful is a better term to use). I will need to fix this up a bit more later on, but I'm digging the effect caused by the overspray.

Dry paint! Dry like the wind! 

With these base coats applied I just have to wait until it all dries and then I can start working on adding painted effects and details (like the bits on the bottom right building here). Perhaps I'll get some cheap gloss and mat varnish to protect the basic paintjob.

One challenge I definitively have is to make something equal to Typhus Corrosion. I consider this Citadel Technical paint as almost equal to using black magic. It applies a bit like a thick wash, dries with a nice corroded texture and covers the area with a grey/green/brownish/blackish color. I used it earlier while painting my siege towers and I want to use some comparable effects here. Unfortunately the GW pots of paint are way too small to cost-effectively use them on terrain.

I've checked around on the usual Facebook groups (and Googled) but so far no one has a homebrew recipe. Any ideas are most welcome, but I suspect I'll be experimenting with paint, pva, sand and floor polish is in my foreseeable future. No problem as the browns I used need more than a day to dry properly (damn you cheap aerosols!). In the meantime I can start on a second set of four plates, in all humility I think this project has enough merits to start expanding it.