Deconstructing the damage

As promised, I took some photos of the different stages of my hull weathering process so that I can better illustrate how I am going about adding all the grunge and grime. I hope this helps.

First, I want to show some closer images of how I do the streaks themselves. In the left photo, I'm using a thin piece of paper (a sales receipt in this case) like a mask to define the edge of a dark streak. In the right photo, you can see that I'm holding it in place while brushing black pastel dust onto the surface. I try to brush right along the edge of the paper to keep the streak as thin as possible.

After removing the paper mask, a nice streak is left on the hull. I go heavier at the top when brushing on the pastels and use less toward the end to make the streak fade off. Before doing the streaks in this manner, I have pre-shaded the area the streak will be made to soften the mark a bit. After this step, I make a thin mixture of water and black pastel dust to brush a fine line in the streak to make it pop.

This series of images begins with the hull quadrant free from any weathering. I begin darkening the areas with black pastel dust and a medium sized brush. I softly indicate where the streaks will be as well as dirty up any areas that are dark in the reference photos I have. Next, I add some color to the armor plates by brushing in browns, oranges, reds, yellows, etc. It's tricky to keep the balance so I go slow and step back to look at the area as a whole frequently.

Now I add the streaks using the technique described earlier. I use the method for both the black and rust streaks. Finally, I paint the blast marks using Tamiya German Gray with a super fine brush. Once that dries, I take my base hull color (50/50 Grime/Reefer White) and outline them looking at the reference. I also have added the chips in the red hull panel using this paint. The access wells/ports get weathered with black pastels, rust, and a little red. That's pretty much all there is to it.