Question About Painting Plaster Rocks

[Anonymous]

Hey guys, I'm working on building my first layout right now. I'm to the rock-dying stage and plan on making a few practice casts to decide which method of rock coloring works best. I've been told before than diluting india ink with water and spraying it on will work well to give the plaster a grey color. Presuming this is true, how much should I dilute the ink? Can I do the same thing with brown paint? If so, what kind of paint?
Thanks.[;)]

[Big_Boy_4005]

Paint isn't a good idea, too many solids in it. I haven't used ink before, but many people do, and with good results. Thinning can be done with water or alcohol. I use paint pigments, in their liquid form and dilute with water. Those can be found at a paint supply store, not necessarily at a home improvement store. Rit dye also works.

A couple of tips:

When you mix your plaster, add some color to it. That way if there are any chips, they won't be a stark white.

Different plasters absorb color at different rates. Start slowly, you can always make it darker, but you can't make it lighter.

[Anonymous]

Thin the india ink and water pretty heavily. Use it sparingly. I used watercolor pigments: Paynes' Gray, Burnt Umber, Raw umber, Burnt Sienna etc....These are sprayed in a leopard spot pattern with very LIGHT washes. Let em' dry before adding more color.

[Anonymous]

I'm using the Woodland Scenics Earth Color Pigments and they look awesome! In their Scenery Manual it walks you through step by step how to dilute and apply these as well! Best of all, they're cheap($4.98 retail per 4 oz bottle) and a little bit goes a long way!

They are made for plaster application and they come in a variety of colors: White, Concrete, Black, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Stone Gray, Slate Gray, Earth Undercoat, and Green Undercoat.

[selector]

You are doing the right, and disciplined, thing, yungun, by accepting that you need to learn for yourself how these methods work. Your answers so far have been right on the money. I tried acrylic hobby paints with good results, but not great results, for the reason that Big Boy stated- visible solids.

You'll find that a few drops, at most, of India Ink with lots of the wash solution (most use diluted isopropyl alcohol) applied over several cycles of wet-to-dry will begin to give you the 'look'. You are attempting to duplicate what nature does over several seasons, but in a few minutes.

Would you favour us with a few photos at some point?

[simon1966]

Yungun, here is what I do.....

First of all, I have a basic base color latex paint that I use as my base paint for the scenery. It is an light earth tone, but you would want to choose a color that represents the colors of your modelled location. I make a very dilute wash of this and put it in a cheap spray bottle. I like to put some color in the plaster mix, as mentioned above, to hide chips. Spray the rocks with this earth mixture and let dry. Then use the dilute ink and water mixture to give the grey tones and to put shadow into the nooks and cranies. You can alternate these until you are happy with the results. Finally, when all is dry, use a dry bru***echnique to put some light hilights on the upper surfaces of the rocks.

[howmus]

yungun, you have gotten a lot of good advise from several different people! A lot seems to be in disagreement with each other. There is no one way to get good results and you are right in trying some different things first. The color that you use should depend on the kind if rocks you want to model. Different types of stone look different so experiment. The best stuff I have found is the Woodland Scenics paints. I think they are more of a dye than a paint and can be diluted to get the shading you want. Much better than the old zip texturing used 25 years ago for stone. The image shown below was done with Slate Grey diluted about 30 to 1. The color was brushed on so I could control the amount used and add more in places where it would be realistic. I used two washes to get the look I wanted. I may still go back and add some more in a few places.