Ground Cover Q&A

[Anonymous]

i'm gonna use tan (does it have to be latex?) paint for ground color on my layout. would it look better if i use a darker shade of tan or another color with the tan? thanks

Alexander

[orsonroy]

Dan,

Most people use interior latex house paint, since it's cheap, easy to use, and washed up with water. There's no reason why you can't use oil paints, but they are harder to use, more expensive, and harder to clean up.

As for color, use whatever looks good to you. I recommend using a tan-ish color (heavy on the ISH), because that's usually the color of dry soil. If the area you want to model has darker soil, go with whatever matches. But don't stress out over the ground color too much; it'll get covered over by flocking and real soil anyway.

[Anonymous]

I would really recommend the latex paint, especially if you are using foam for scenery. Some of the other paints might weaken the foam. Again, the latex is also cheap.
Reed

[Anonymous]

[#ditto] I used latex spray paint on mine. Oil will make a mess of the foam, and you really don't want to do that at this point. Spray paint is easier to apply than others, you can apply a base of tan, then lightly spray dark brown over it, to add a tint. Beware: Krylon Latex spray paint sprays very quickly, try it out before you go to work. The fumes aren't near as bad as normal spray, and it dries at least as quickly as oil does. Around here, you can find it at Hobby Lobby, but there should be a store in your area that has it also.

Good luck,
Greg

[Texas Zepher]

QUOTE: Originally posted by bnsf6733

i'm gonna use tan (does it have to be latex?) paint for ground color on my layout. would it look better if i use a darker shade of tan or another color with the tan?

If you don't use latex and have foam scenery do a test section to make certain the paint doesn't eat the foam.

The color depends on what you're trying to accomplish. What color is the ground of the area you are modeling? I've seen everything including red, white, and black dirt/soil/rock. It also often looks better if there is not a single solid color but several that mix and blend and shade in and out from one another.

[Anonymous]

That's exactly the color I used. Tan interior latex. I also added darker brown in. I will soon be adding my greens such as grass etc. Here is a pic of my layout with only the paint before my track was laid. I painted the foam :
Just plain yellow foam:

Pinted tan:

Brown mixed in:

[Anonymous]

As mentioned above, don't be to concerned with the base color.
I bought a couple partial gallons of second hand latex paint, mixed them together and came up with a nasty shade of brown with a purple tint. I used it to seal the foam scenery, then used thinned Artist acrylics to get the brown and gray colors were i needed them.
then most of it was covered with sifted dirt from my back yard.
there's a few photos in this link.
http://www.the-gauge.com/showthread.php?t=11976