I finally got around to trying my hand at drybrushing. Here are the results:
I only had one shade of brown, which turned out a little darker than I would have liked. Yes, I have to admit that it is a bit overdone, but hey, it's my first time and it is a $2 car. I'm happy with the results...
Any tips for the future?
Acela
The timbers beneath the rails are not the only ties that bind on the railroad. --Robert S. McGonigal
For what it is, it looks very good. To me also it is a little over done for the way I like weathering.
I know there are other modelers that like the look you have on this boxcar. There are some rolling stock out there that do look like like your model, I have seen them.
My first attempts at weathering were such that I would not have cared to show any one, not even my wife.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
I think it looks great! I wouldn't change a thing.
Here is my first weathering. I used crayons. They are cheap and look great.
Looks good to me, especially for a first timer.You might want to add some rust color to the wheels if you have it.
Not bad for a first attempt. This is one of mine done with acrylic paint dry brushed on with a water color brush.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
You should be happy. I think one of the hardest parts of weathering is starting, and you've started.
Also, you know exactly what you think is "wrong" with it - one color and a little overdone. So you learned a lot already. I'd say this is a 100% win.
My only criticism - do the wheels.
Sean
HO Scale CSX Modeler
You are on the right track and, based on the fact that you have already found things that you can improve on, you will only get better. I'm not so sure that it is overdone when compared to well used modern rolling stock.
One suggestion I would make is to use a tripod or other device to steady the camera. The pictures were a little blurry. I am sure you will learn to do that better too.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
This has me thinking back to when I sent away for a Bob Ross painting kit, after watching him do his miraculous little 30 minute landscapes on television.
I'd watch how he made "clouds." He'd be careful to not get too symmetrical, but also never too wild.
His teachings caused me to pay way more attention to REAL clouds and trees, and so forth, from then on. What I observed, is that NATURE has no such rules! I'm sure all readers here have witnessed really strange looking cloud formations, and if you've tried to paint a backdrop for a layout, you may have thought to yourself: "If I ever painted anything that looks like THAT up there, people would LAUGH at me."
Same goes for weathering: I'll bet there's a prototype for each of the pictured cars on this thread, that wouldn't even be hard to find...as well as some none of us would DARE try to emulate.
Looks good! Maybe just a little heavy but then again maybe not . . . . . . . . . . I've seen some pretty corroded cars and you've modeled a pretty corroded car.
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
The OP said: I'm happy with the results... and that´s the most important issue.
For a first attempt at weathering, it looks good to me.
Keep on going!
The one thing that stood out to me was the attention you paid to the roof. One of the first things I do, once a car is at the weathering stage, is"attack" the roof. A lot of forethought should be given to that area, as it is the first area to see the effect of nature, which would be the ultimate "weatherer"
I have seen a lot of models weathered to beat the band, but the roofs are as pristine as when the car left the factory. Good job for a first attempt. Onward and upward!!!
It's look very realistic, congrats!!
hectorgonzalesHere is my first weathering. I used crayons. They are cheap and look great.
OK, someone has to say it. No. It doesn't look weathered, it looks exactly like what it is: rubbed with a coloured piece of wax.
I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but sorry, no. The technique really doesn't work. It doesn't look remotely realistic at all. It doesn't look "great" it looks like a 10 year old's toy train set.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
Acela026 Any tips for the future? Acela
Some general comments on appearances, if not techniques:
You already mentioned using only one colour of brown. If you really look at rust, it comes in several different colours, from a fairly bright orange for "fresh" rust to darker browns for older rust. Different types of steel may contribute to slightly different colours of rust as well.
The pictures aren't real clear, but the amount of rust on the exposed galvanized roof seems alright for an older battered car, if too monochrome. However running boards (roof walks) were removed from boxcars starting in the early 1970s. A BN car this battered would be from a period after roofwalk removal (just something to keep in mind if you have any thought of modelling a particular time period or era).
For the sides of the car, you'll generally note that first the car's paint will fade from exposure to the elements (sun and rain). Many people will airbrush a VERY thin coat of white over the entire car to fade down the colour. (Of course if you don't have an airbrush that's a little difficult to do)
Rust will generally start to form in scratches or dents, or general pitting over the car. Exposure to rain tends to cause the rust to streak downwards on the car side from the pits.
Rain weathering will tend to cause streaks of grime down the car side from the eaves, especially at the end of the door tracks, which will sort of act as a natural rain gutter.
The other thing is that a car will gradually accumulate an general coating of dust and road grime from travelling around. This will basically cover the car but be heaviest along the bottom. Just a thin coating of light sandy-dirt coloured brown. This is probably easiest to reproduce with an airbrush, but there are also powder weathering techniques that work well here.
The last pointer would be to weather the wheels and trucks. They are still very bright and shiny on your car.
cv_acr hectorgonzales: Here is my first weathering. I used crayons. They are cheap and look great. OK, someone has to say it. No. It doesn't look weathered, it looks exactly like what it is: rubbed with a coloured piece of wax. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but sorry, no. The technique really doesn't work. It doesn't look remotely realistic at all. It doesn't look "great" it looks like a 10 year old's toy train set.
hectorgonzales: Here is my first weathering. I used crayons. They are cheap and look great.
Primary problem is using the wrong medium, a pastel chalk would work better or watercolor pencils (they are pretty good on wood sided cars).
Hector should carefully look at some prototype photos. One problem with crayons or hard media is that they tend to color the TOPS of things while weathering tends to color the BOTTOM of things. For example the ribs on the car sides are black. If you look at a real car the tops of the ribs are probably the brightest part of the car, not the darkest.
I would take fine wet dry sand paper and clean all the ribs off. To salvage the car I would suggest trying some paint thinner on a small corner of the car, checking to see if a quick brush of paint thinner will dissolve the wax but not dissolve the paint or plastic. It might be another chemical such as turpentine or alcohol. I would then get a soft brush about a half inch wide and load it up with thinner and draw it down the sides of the car, not letting it puddle on the sides, but softening and spreading out the colors.
Once the car is dry, put the crayons in another room and never touch them again unless you are making a poster.
Instead, try very, very thin washes of paint combined with a little dry brushing. Generally, unless you are very, good, less is more. A subtly weathered car will often look much better than a heavily weathered car.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
cv_acr OK, someone has to say it. No. It doesn't look weathered, it looks exactly like what it is: rubbed with a coloured piece of wax. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but sorry, no. The technique really doesn't work. It doesn't look remotely realistic at all.
I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but sorry, no. The technique really doesn't work. It doesn't look remotely realistic at all.
Honest feedback can be painful, but I agree with Chris on this. The crayon weathering looks exactly like crayon rubbings and nothing like weathering on a prototype freight car. The distribution of color doesn't remotely reflect how weathering accumulates, and the technique looks quite heavy-handed. I'm not sure how you could use regular wax crayons and not have it turn out well either due to the limitations of the medium.
Rob Spangler
Acela026 Any tips for the future?
As you've indicated, you know some of the effects on this car are overdone, and the monochromatic rust isn't necessarily realistic. Realizing you have more to learn is important, and suggests you want to improve, so thumbs up on that.
As for the future, one thing to work on would be fine-tuning the art of accumulating weathering in layers. It's harder to overdo a car if you build up lighter/thinner layers atop one another rather than going for the whole rust patch in one shot.
Also, pay some very close attention to more prototype photos, especially of roofs. Your roof has a pristine silver look topped with rust. By the time that much rust built up, there would be a lot of oxidation on the exposed metal. The rust pattern could also use some work to more closely adhere to where the rust occurs on a prototype roof. Also, your car shows no indications of the typical door damage to the adjacent carbody or lubrication drippings from the door hardware and other gunk along the lower tracks.
As others have indicated, toning down the underbody would also help. The wheels could use some dirty, greasy black/gray color if they're supposed to be mounted in solid bearing trucks. Rust wouldn't be appropriate unless you're representing roller bearing retrofit trucks, which is possible but not likely given the enclosed journals.
When you start to add weathering, it also emphasizes the lack of such things as ACI labels, consolidated stencils, yellow-dot U-1 symbols, and the like. All of those are easy to add with decals. Thre are lots of photos for weathering ideas on the RR Fallen Flags site; here's a link for BN equipment http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/bn/bn-frt.html .
Please take the above constructively. You've made a start and will keep improving with practice.
Thanks, guys!
I will use all the above advice/criticisms to help "clean up my weathering" so to speak. Two points I would like to make: Someone commented on the running board. Well, seeing as it is cast into the shell there isn't much chance of removing it. And two, I only had two bottles of paint at my disposal- a generic brown and flat black. Next trip to Hobby Lobby I will find some more "rustic" colors...
Thanks again for your help!
You may want to try a technique I'm very fond of...mainly as it is SO easily UNdone:
Be it the 99 cent kid's paintbox version, or the hockey puck sized cakes I found online, you can use watercolours as a weathering agent. And if you decide you've overdone it, or want to add just a bit more, NO PROBLEM...a wet cloth takes you back to where you started.
Let me see if I can find a photo already in Photobucket to show how well this simple method can look...
...and I also spotted a photo of the "pucks" I referred to, above:
In Acela's defense, I must say that, on www.railpictures.net, have seen LOCOMOTIVES that look as bad as, if not WORSE than his first weathering attempt! Unfortunately, rail pictures doesn't concentrate too much on rolling stock and cars just blend into the background, in most cases. TTFN.....papaHOsmurf in NH
As others have pointed out, it's certainly possible to find protoype instances of almost any model weathering job. But I think there's a larger issue, raised more than once in the model magazines (I'm sorry I don't recall well enough to give credit; it may have been Allen McClelland). If every car in your fleet, or in a consist, is distinctive by its weathering or some other characteristic (billboard reefers or circus cars, for instance), the viewer's attention is altered in a way that makes the overall scene--the train, the yard, the layout--appear smaller and generally less like the real thing. Yes, there are many "outstanding" cars and locos around, but that's the point: they stand out from a larger uniformity, even drabness, and that contributes to seeing a scene or a whole layout as in accordance with the viewer's everyday experience.
I suspect that this is really what argues for a more subtle approach to weathering an individual car. What may matter most is that they're all done at about the same level.