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I have been meaning to try out more weathering with my miniature painting. I am not the best painter, and I have always felt, rightly or wrongly, that weathering a model that wasn’t painted well was kind of cheating. I felt like I needed to get the regular painting down first, and then move on to weathering. 

I have realized that this is a wrong philosophy, because if your intent is to have a weathered Space Marine, then you don’t need to take a perfect Space Marine and literally weather it. You can simply paint it to LOOK like it was once a perfect Space Marine that has been weathered. It’s a small distinction, but an important one. 

So I set out to learn how to weather models. 

Now, to be completely clear, I have been doing miniature weathering since I learned about weathering from a copy of Boy’s Life when I was twelve, and I convinced my mom to let me paint brown and black all over my model trains. So I’ve known about the concept, and I’ve been doing variations on it for my whole life. I worked in theater for years and set design is nothing if not fake weathering. 

But how to do it properly with models–that was something that I didn’t really know. 

For a long time, however, I have heard about a product from AK Interactive called Streaking Grime. I have been very reluctant to buy it because, frankly, I haven’t been happy with AK Interactive’s business practices, particularly when they put out a model-making book with directions for how to build your own Auschwitz gas chamber. They haven’t been my favorite company, and I didn’t want to deal with them.

Anyway, last week I decided that giving them ten dollars wouldn’t hurt, so I ordered a bottle. 

But the very next day I was in my FLGS and the manager excitedly told me that they had just gotten a new product line in: Dirty Down Rust, Dirt Down Verdigris, and Dirty Down Moss. She said that they were excellent, and I looked them over. 

For starters, I liked the fact that they were water soluble paints. That’s a sticking point with me and Streaking Grime–I haven’t wanted to deal with white spirits. (Admittedly, the main reason for this is that every time I use an oil wash I inevitably accidentally lick my brush and severely regret it. But that’s just me.) 

But I also did like the fact that I could use Dirty Down Rust straight from the pot, and that I didn’t have to worry about linseed oil and tradition oil paints and other oil-based things. 

So I picked up a bottle of the Dirty Down Rust and the Dirty Down Verdigris–I didn’t see a need for moss, as I was going to be painting Space Marines–and a can of spray paint and went up to the counter. 

And when she rang up my purchases I nearly choked on the $62 total. Turns out that bottles of Dirty Down Rust are over twenty dollars. These bottles are not big. They’re 25 ml. By comparison, a Games Workshop Citadel wash is 24 ml. And Citadel paints are known for being extremely expensive. So if Dirty Down was beating it, then you know it’s a problem.

But I paid it, and I took the paints home. 

The first thing I decided to try was to paint up a set of Ultramarines. I had a box of Primaris Intercessors, and made short work of a squad of five. I painted them to a pretty good tabletop standard, and then got ready to apply the weathering. 

And this was the first model. For this model, I have used Dirty Down Rust on the armor, Dirty Down Verdigris on the metallic Aquilla, a bit of Typhus Corrossion, and weathering pigments. The base is Vallejo texture paste. 

The process for the application was to paint the whole model to a tabletop standard, then varnish it with satin (I was out of gloss, or I would have used gloss), then applied all the weathering, then varnished with matte. 

Here’s the entire squad of Ultramarines. 

And my opinion at this point? I liked them, but I wasn’t thrilled with them. They didn’t look… rusty. And the verdigris didn’t look like verdigris. The Dirty Down Rust looked like I had just used a brown ink, and the Dirty Down Verdigris looked like a green wash. That one in particular was disappointing. It looked no different going on than if I was applying Biel-Tan Green. 

So, I went to YouTube, looking for tutorials, to see if anyone had better luck with Dirty Down products than I did. There were a few videos, but not many. But I did see a few pointers. One person said that it was important that the bottles of paint were warm. Another said to shake them for a long time. And, these videos did appear to have better rust effects than I was getting from mine. 

So, I painted up five more Space Marines. These weren’t any particular legion–I just wanted to see if painting rust over a metallic would be better than painting rust over Macragge Blue. I basecoated these five Marines in Iron Hands Steel, then did the details in Screaming Bell. 

I did the same thing with these that I did with the others. I painted the Dirty Down Rust over the armor, and I painted the Dirty Down Verdigris over the Aquilla. I shook, as Bob Ross would say, the devil out of the paint pots. I put them in a bowl of warm water until they were warm to the touch. 

And the result? Well here’s the first one. Doesn’t look terribly rusty, does it?

I painted the entire squad in the same way. One of the videos that I watched used three or four coats, waiting for each to dry before applying the next (it dies very quickly), so I did that. 

And I really am disappointed. 

Now, granted, I think that these models look pretty good. I’m not ashamed to have any of them–including the Ultramarines I painted first–on my hobby shelf. But they simply don’t look rusty. They look like they’ve been washed heavily. And I honestly like Nilakh Oxide better than Dirty Down Verdigris–and it’s fifteen dollars cheaper. 

And that’s where it all breaks down for me. These paints look decent, but they don’t do what they’re advertised to do. I feel like I gave them a really good run (and I intend to try them at least one more time) but for $20+ per pot of paint I expect to be wowed. And I’m not.

In the interest of being fair and balanced, I have gone ahead and ordered a bottle of AK Interactive’s Streaking Grime. I have also bought a bottle of Mig’s Streaking Grime. I intend to put them through the paces and give them a review, too. 

But, man. I wanted so much more from Dirty Down. I can’t recommend them. 

UPDATE:

I gave it one more try with five more Space Marines, and guys: I hate this product.