Just purchased the new Walther Cornerstone Dairy Queen Grill & Chill Structure,item # 933-3485, the front entrance is a stone facade, it is part #6 and it is supposed to be stone. The plastic part is molded with the stone embossed into it, but you have to paint the stone itself. Any tips on doing this would be greatly appreciated as it looks like a very time consuming process especially some one with unsteady hands. I am assuming at the least I will need some special paint brushes to do this, thanking you all in advance for any help in this matter.
Nothing special needed. I painted a similar embossed styrene sheet material by first painting everything with a coat of medium grey. This provides a uniform color for the mortar and a base color for the stone. Once the base coat is dry, drybrush both darker and lighter shades of grey onto the faces/edges of stone. Add some more randomly drybrushed shades of subtle blue-grey and green-grey and finally a little white to add highlights. Give it a try and see what you think. Good luck!
Hornblower
Much better way is to pain your mortar and use stiff makeup sponges to dry dabble on the stone color, go back and paint a random stone here or there if you want, another color.
Here's the kit he's referring to...
http://www.walthers.com/exec/bigimage/933-3485?img=0
I'm a fan of makeup sponges for weathering, but I think it may be difficult painting individual stones with a sponge.
If you have a Michael's or Dick Blick near you, you could try Faber-Castell artists pens. They should give you more control than a paint brush.
http://www.dickblick.com/products/faber-castell-pitt-artist-pens/
Scroll down to see the list of color choices. There are quite a few that should work for your DQ. If you do use the pens, you'll want the base color to be a light color. They probably won't show up well against a dark color.
Steve S
I'd probably spray it primer gray to start, then color the stones with art markers, then cover the whole thing with a layer of powdered charcoal to fill in the 'mortar' lines and weather the stone colors so they blend together better...then spray it with flat finish. Of course, I'd do this before assembling the kit!!
The Walthers photo of the painted kit shows individual stones of different solid colors. It would be more likely for stone veneer of this type to come from a single quarry (or at least be the same type of stone) where individual stone colors would vary but much more subtly than the solid colors in the Walthers photo. Look at a prototype stone wall and you're more likely to see that most of the stones have a similar base color with only hints or highlights of different colors. Using the technique I described earlier in this thread, I have been able to create rather realistic representations of stone walls.
Unless it is the fake stone wall, with a vinyl "stone" finish. (Likely is real stone, but if they used the fake vinyl "stone" as a test.....)
I would go with the markers myself. Just primer, (with real primer so it is slightly ruff.) marker paint, dull-cote, powder weathering, seal. Much easier to get the stone look as pictured. (Now, full quarried stone, dry brush technique.)
Ricky W.
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