Weathering: Which is the best way?

[LizardJedi]

In the not so distant future, I have two items that I need to paint, a blaster and a helmet. The helmet is definartly going to be weathered.

My question is how I should go about doing it.
Should I paint the helmet its base color (green) and then add in scratches and dents with silver paint?
Or paint the whole thing silver first, then take some steel wool, a BBQ brush and an xacto knife to it?

I'm having the same thoughts with the blaster. Would it be worthwhile to paint the whole thing silver before painting it black, so when I bang it around (it happens) and gets scratches, the scratches are auctally silver insted of black?

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Paint silver first, then mask off the larger areas that need to remain silver with liquid masking and then paint the next color. You can then scrape away the top layer to get to the silver where needed or do the smaller scratches on top of that color - topical weathering. At least, this is how I would do it. :thumbsup

 

[Darth Kahnt]

Go with the silver base coat, looks much more authentic that way.