SIGNATURE SET – TOTAL CHIPPING – KRISTOF PULINCKX SET

Chipped paint as a storyteller

The technique known as chipping rests on a simple consideration: paint on a real machine does not wear away at random. It disappears where the crew treads on it, where equipment rubs against it and where flying stones strike it on the edges. Beneath it the primer appears, and only beneath that the bare metal. It is exactly this sequence that a modeler has to build up on the surface, otherwise the scuffs look like dots stuck on.

The run of eighteen shades is put together so that it covers the individual layers on its own. It begins with a white and a silver for the lightest places, continues with a metallic gray and several grades of gray including a gray leaning to red, and then comes the strongest part of the palette: a light and a dark rust, an orange brown, a deep red and a shade of hull red of the kind used on the underwater parts of ships.

From the primer to the top coat

The palette closes its darker end with a chocolate and a muddy brown, a black red and a black. For the top coat itself there are a very dark green, a dark gray to the standard RAL 7021 and a saturated dark blue, so that both ground vehicles and a naval or railroad subject can be built up.

The shades are applied with a brush as well as with an airbrush and stand up to the usual methods: the sponge technique, where the scuffs are dabbed on with a piece of foam, and work with a fine point, with which the individual flakes of chipped paint are refined. Before applying, it is worth trying a shade out on a scrap of plastic, because light tones behave differently on a dark base than on a light one.