Grimdark Industrial Scatter Terrain

The next scenario for my Five Parsecs from Home Campaign takes place in an industrial zone, so I took the opportunity to paint some more terrain.

Preface

Terrain is always fun to paint because you get to try new techniques in a low risk environment. It's supposed to be the backdrop to our minis, so it really doesn't matter if there are some messy mistakes here and there.

I still had some Munitorum containers lying around from the Warhammer Imperium magazine, and it was about time that I painted them. A few months ago, I watched a video from TWS about using a stippling technique to get a quick and rough paintjob down. Having never tried stippling on such a large scale, I decided to try out three distinct color schemes and experiment a bit.

Paint Scheme

I had three sprues, which meant three different main colors. Blue and yellow were chosen as sort of a test run for future Space Marines. I'm still undecided between Ultramarines and Imperial Fists. Lore-wise, I prefer the Imperial Fists but painting an entire army in yellow is a very daunting proposition.
Red, as the third color, would allow me to practice working with colors that are hard to differentiate for me (I'm red/green colorblind).

For the most part, I followed the tutorial from TWS (linked above), the major difference being that I started from a black primer instead. Light primers help with vibrancy, but I wanted an overall grimy and dirty look.

The gradual stippling was really fun and a nice change of pace to the usual mini painting. You can definitely play around with the amount of water in the paint to get a variety of textures and effects.

The metal parts, I kept very simple and rough. Just a basecoat and a wash were enough for my taste.

Small details like the number pads are very quick to do and add a lot of character to the piece.
It's just a black basecoat and some Wraithbone for the buttons.

The OSL on the lights were my first time ever trying anything like that. It's a gradual drybrush around the light source, followed by a yellow contrast paint. I only had Nazdreg Yellow and a lighter yellow would have been better. Nonetheless, I'm happy with the result considering that I spent maybe 10 minutes on all the lights together.

Weathering

Previously, I hadn't done much weathering on my terrain. I was always intimidated by tutorials showing a variety of materials (hairspray, oil paints, rust effects, etc.) that I didn't have at hand. My mind was blown when I realized that you can create similar looking effects with basic acrylic paints and a sponge.

A semi-random dark brown, followed by a more controlled light silver, is perfect for wear & tear. That's all I did.

You can go further and add watered down reddish browns for grime and rust streaks, but that felt like overkill for this project, so I skipped it.

Conclusion

I'm quite happy with the end results, even though the OSL on the yellow container looks like complete garbage. On the table, they look perfect as a backdrop that doesn't draw too much attention, while simultaneously supporting the atmosphere of a grimy and dirty industrial zone.

You will see them in the next After Action Report of my Five Parsecs from Home Campaign.