Weathering your boots

evan4218

Active Hunter
Weathering your boots.... it can be tricky if you dont have an airbrush so I wanted to try and come up with a way to make the weathered and more screen accurate with out one... even though I have one. Just to see if it could be done... and using the same style that I have applyed to my spats but with paper towels instead of an airbrush, low and behold it works like a champ.

Here is what I did.

Take three small boles that are glass or can be thrown away since your going to get paint all over them.

Next get a bottle of cheap acrylic paint in three colors... I use the chepo wallmart paints in the craft section. There .50 cents to .75 each. Get white, black and brown.

In each bowl squirt a little paint in then fill up with water and mix. You will leave the white alone once mixed... the same with the brown... The brown you want the least amount of paint as this is just to ad value... the boots never appeared to have large ammounts of brown to me, just subtle hints of it.

Next you want to ad a touch of white to your black... this lightens it just a bit... perhaps even a smidge of brown for ritchness.

Then you fold a large peice of paper towl in to a rectangle and dab it in the light watery brown and ad some subtle brown, followed by greyish black on the greay parts of your shoes and soles... the more you go back and add the darker it gets... dont forget to evely rub it on... the harder you press the darker it is.

Then using a new paper towl do the same with the white on the black parts of the shoe.

After your done you can let it dry or dry it with a hair dryer. Then if you realy want an old look take a sanding block (get it at home depot or wallmark) and rub it on the fabric. It can lighten up your stains a bit so you may want to do this first.

Here is the result. :)

boots.jpg
 
Another method I heard a few years ago, was to spray hairspray on the boots, and take 'em out to the backyard and rub dirt all over the boots. I've never tried this, but it offers another option.
 
Hairspray... thats a great idea... I had fun mud surfing with my cape when I weathered that in my back yard... so theres some potential with the shoes.
 
It looks great, only I'd go for a more spotted effect rather then make the boots a whole new kind of colour.

I don 't have an airbrush either, just washed on yellow to the sole, blue and brown and black to the grey parts and blue and grey to the black parts.

then misted with brown, black and grey.
 
It has some spotted areas... this was just a quick test to see what I could do with a simple wwash... the spotted areas on the origonals are quite suttle too. But me being me... I will go back with an airbrush and several more colors for mine o get it perfect! :)
 
Looking really good, nice work. Another tip, I found that spraying a light mist of grey primer over the boots also tones down the black nicely.
 
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