Your kind words are much appreciated, Greg.
The pastels are pretty easy to use, although I'm not sure how easily they might be removed from plaster castings - at least the Durabond won't readily soften if one were to use water when attempting to remove excess weathering.
If you can find (or create) a fairly light grey paint, put a little bit of it in a spare paint bottle, then then use a brush, dipping it into various other colours, to add a drop or drops of those colours. I have found yellow a good addition to create an aged concrete colour, but some red and/or brown along with it can be useful, too.Usually, I merely wipe the brush clean using a tissue or paper towel, between dips into those other colours, but you can clean it fully if you're worried about adulterating those paints.
If you keep a record of how many drops of each colour you're adding, you should be able to replicate it in oz. or mm. values. I very seldom use colours direct from the bottle, even when brush-painting, and to facilitate that, I usually have a good supply of bottles and caps on-hand, cleaned-out using lacquer thinner and a rag when the original paint has been used-up.
And that dip-and-drop method will even work with colors missing their "u", too.
Wayne
Don't forget to make a muddy high water line on the abutments to replicate the flooding that occurs.
jcopilot I have several Walthers 'concrete' bridge abutments that I'll be using with 'steel' girder bridges. I want to weather the abutments with the appearance of streaking rust from the bridges and general dirt from water runoff. I've experimented with oil paints, pastels and my wife's scrapbooking inks and dyes but I can't quite capture the right look. I've seen some photos (they're hard to come by) where the rust and dirt stains are in streaks and others where they're blotchy and ill-defined. Colors vary in intensity. Would you show me some examples of your rusty, dirty abutments and explain how you did them? Techniques and products used, please. Thank you for your help, Jeff
I have several Walthers 'concrete' bridge abutments that I'll be using with 'steel' girder bridges. I want to weather the abutments with the appearance of streaking rust from the bridges and general dirt from water runoff. I've experimented with oil paints, pastels and my wife's scrapbooking inks and dyes but I can't quite capture the right look.
I've seen some photos (they're hard to come by) where the rust and dirt stains are in streaks and others where they're blotchy and ill-defined. Colors vary in intensity.
Would you show me some examples of your rusty, dirty abutments and explain how you did them? Techniques and products used, please.
Thank you for your help,
Jeff
Deano
Wayne, that is just absolutely amazing to me. Great pictures.
Greg Whitehead
Ironically, I live in the only county in Tennessee with no railroad tracks.
The dry brushing technique, whether it's with paints, or powders, is the key to creating rust and dirt streaks, as eveyone's examples show.
Use a flat concrete colored paint, from the jar, or mix your own, to paint a piece of styrene, and then practice dry brushing methods, until you get something your satisfied with.
Mike.
My You Tube
I have a handful of AIM weathering powders. These are very useful for weathering everything from buildings to boxcars. A small brush and some powders can work miracles.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Some rust-stained bridge piers...
All of the piers and abutments were cast in custom-made styrene moulds, using Durabond 90 patching plaster, then given a wash of custom-mixed water based paint in a concrete-like colour.To create the rust stains, I used oil-based artists' pastel sticks, simply rubbing the sticks over coarse sandpaper, then dumping the resultant dust into a suitable container. The powder was applied using suitably-sized brushes...mostly 1/2" and 1/4" sizes.I use several different orange, brown and red shades, and sometimes some black, too.
...the bridges are all removeable as single entities, making it easy to add the stains at any time...
The footings for the steel towers were made by stacking sheets of .060" styene, then cutting and filing them to shape...
I'll second the recommendation to paint the Walthers pieces a flat concrete grey first. Once dry, try pastels again. I like to scrape some pastel powder loose from the pastel sticks, then rub the powder onto the model. Although I don't have any pictures available, I have had good results increasing the transfer of the pastels to the model, as well as created streaking dirt, rust, etc. by partially wetting the brush with which I apply the pastels. Use a water cup and a paper towel to control how wet/dry you get your brush. A "wet" brush application will be downright grimy while a "moist" brush application will give you more control. Dry brush applications are more subtle. If you get a little too much pastel color on the model you can thin (or even remove) it with a freshly wetted brush. Good Luck!
Hornblower
Hello All,
One thing that might help is to primer the plastic to a flat finish as a base for your weathering.
Cody Grivino has recommended Rust-Oleum Painter's Touch 2X Gray Primer (249088) for this purpose.
A flat finish will also allow the weathering medium to "stick" to the surface better than the glossy finish of the original plastic, no matter what method(s) you use.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Sure, and I don't claim to have done a great job of it, but here is what I managed quite a few years back:
Here's a closer view of an abutment crafted out of leftover pieces of 1/4" MDF strips used on a previous layout for spline roadbed. This is on a 4' X 12" diorama.
The abutment was carved out of pieces of extruded insulation foam, scored to simulate the form seams, and then sprayed with a diluted India ink solution. The rust was an early attempt, done with too wide a brush, but it's strictly red and yeloow acrylic crafts paints with a bit of Burnt Umber thrown it to dull it a bit.