""Filthing up" & dulling bright plastics and enamel paints." Topic

Hi, Walt O'Hara here. I'm painting up a huge lot of kitbashed Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars to run post-apocalyptic road war style games as in Mad Max, etc. You can see the start of this effort here: link

My general method, with a regular "stock" car from the Hot Wheels or Matchbox line, has been to start with a dull coat of primer, grey, metallic, armory brown or armory dark red-brown. These will be inked and drybrushed to create a patina of rust and dirt on them. Then I will add color details to the highest levels of the model.

The problem I'm having is there are a few of these cars where I don't wish to obscure EVERYTHING under a primer coat. For instance, one of my Hot Wheels cars is a Sushi truck-- I rather like the idea of an armed lunch wagon riding those apocalyptic highways. Unfortunately, it's really, really bright yellow (plastic for the most part). I'd like to keep the detail of the decals and just add a few conversion bits--like a cage windshield and armor plated doors. How to dull it down and filth it up a little so the design is left discernible?

Plastics are easier than the metals, which have a really high gloss on them and are hard change without primer paint. There are a few that I'd like to keep the original paint job on, just make it grimy and UN-shiny for the actual game.

Any advice on how to dampen the out of the box Hot Wheels or Matchbox car without totally obscuring the original design?

V/R

Walt O'Hara

Just cut out a piece of tape and put it over the areas you don't want obscured. Or use green stuff. Masking tape should work well for that.

Have you tried dusting with shaved chalk/pastels then hit it with dullcote? I have recently been doing this with my model railroad houses and it seems better than painting! It dulls down the shiny plastic.

I have done this with those cheap cars for 28mm games. Turning a hilux i to a technical from the third world I just hit them with dull cote then paint and chalk over the dull cote effectively using t as primer

Airbrush with heavily thinned (flat) paint?

Doug

take some sand paper across it (or put it in a bag of sand in the dryer). the idea is to scratch it up then to use a flat wash

Wash with brown/sepia wash….

Simply brush on a layer of acrylic matte varnish. I use Winsor Newton Galeria, but there are other brands that will work as well. 1 or 2 coats without adding water should take the shine right away. After that you can wash, drybrush, whatever. Matte varnish is also a much better surface for drybrushing than the original gloss enamel.

I've got a bunch of 1/43 die cast that I've done the same thing. They were even easier in that I could unscrew the parts and quickly matte-spray just the bodies. The brush-on dries more matte than the spray, but either is fine. The problem with spray on hot wheels is that it clouds up the windows.

I picked up Winsor Newton Galeria matte varnish. I'll give it a try.

Cool.
I'll be looking forward to your finished vehicles!

Oh, I'll be posting a follow up.. this is a fun kit-bashing exercise.

Walt