Wall

[Ray Dunakin]

That looks great Dan! I like the color of the wood too.

[finescalerr]

Dan, can you be a little more specific about the kind of spray adhesive you used? -- Russ

[danpickard]

Russ,
Its just one of the common brand spray adhesive, but often they stock two types...permanent and temporary bond.  The temporary bond is often used for artwork layouts or photo mountings.  It actually has clearly written on the can "temporary" bond, however, if you read the directions, it usually says to wait about 10 minutes til the glue goes tacky (and then becomes only a temporary hold), but if wanting a more permanent bond, stick down immediately.  To do the pictured boards, I prepared the boards to the aged brown/grey first, and then mounted them onto some mattboard as a group.  Spritzed the spray adhesive on from about 12", aiming for a random and uneven cover.  The glue dries near invisible.  Once the wait time has elapsed, brush painted the white, let dry, and then "waxed" the paint off with a high tack masking tape.  Most of what I wanted to come off came off with a few quick lifts of the tape, but extra sections were scratched back with the edge of a blade.  I lightly sanded the boards when finished to reduce some of the white paint thickness.  Finished up with working in a bit of bragdons powders with an artists stump once they were mounted on the structure.   Thats pretty much it.  I'm actually working on an article on the technique for my local NG magazine, so will have a few more photo trials at a later stage.

I had tried a few of the other techniques (different thinners with paint over top, but got mixed results, and had trouble sourcing a good gum arabic locally for masking with).  This was just a trial that worked out better than I expected...with fairly predictable/reproducable results

Dan

[DaKra]

Russ's computer generated paint chipping has a very realistic pattern to the chipping, the paint is shown flaked off in a pattern influenced by the grain of the wood.   Paint lifted with tape seems doesn't seem to do this as well.    I think Russ is onto something really good here.

[RoughboyModelworks]

Though I've never been a proponent of this medium, Russ' latest tests in combination with the finishing steps outlined by Marc is showing real potential... good to see and well worth the experimentation and effort.

Paul

[finescalerr]

This peeling paint issue is really a mystery to me. I look at photos and, often, the peeling appears in what seems random spots. Marc cautioned me that there is really a logic to it and explained it pretty well in another thread (although I can't remember its name). In most photos I've studied, I can't see that logic.

When I look at Marc's peeled paint, it looks fine. When I look at my little invention, it looks fine. I have very good control over where the peels can go and how big they are and what color the weathered wood is underneath. But, to my eye, it doesn't look better or worse, more or less realistic, than other techniques.

I came up with my peels by selecting them from a photo of an actual peeling wall and running them through some Photoshop manipulation. I am happy with their appearance and paste them wherever I want.

Two final thoughts:

No matter how good printed artwork might be, you still need to do something to it by hand. Sometimes that may be a few touches of weathering powder. Or it may be an application of some kind of wash or artist's marker. I suspect even an overspray of matte varnish or lacquer would help. It needs an "analog" touch to bring it to life.

The second thing is that most modelers tend to resist using Photoshop or even cardstock. Most of us think of our hobby as kind of a tactile thing and we cling to traditional ways of creating effects. I remember a real master once telling me that in 1:48 we should use wood to represent wood, glass to represent glass, and metal to represent metal. But that was in 1965! Now we have a lot of styrene and all kinds of other materials. And honestly, guys, card does a better job of representing painted wood in 1:48 and smaller scales because of its finer texture and printed cardstock can look more real (though not necessarily better) than painted card. Trust me. I've nitpicked, analyzed, studied, and compared the two. Yet the only card modeling we usually see is the nincompoop who glues raw Paper Creek artwork over a subwall (no scribing, no individual boards, nothing) and says, "Wow! Look what I did!"

As many times as I have shown a starting point with cardstock, the general reaction here is that it's kind of an interesting aberration. To date, Marc is the only one to mess with it.

It's a hobby. We should do what we find satisfying. But I hope somebody, someday, gets curious enough to try to push the envelope. I think inkjet printers, card, and something else (I'm not sure what) could open a new vista.

Russ

[marc_reusser]

Okay, another quick experiment...sorry to do this to you all again...but I had to try one more approach...and wanted to try a rotting board and bricks while I was at it....I promise this is the last time I'll foist one of these wall on you. 


Scale on this is 1/35. The wood siding and the bricks are made of 4-ply Strathmore board.


Overall view from about 12"/30cm:




Close view from about 3"/7.5cm:




Detail view of rotten board and brick from about 1.5"/3.75cm:




...again, a lot of room for improvement, but it showed me some possibilities.


Marc

[Don Railton]

"The wood siding and the bricks are made of 4-ply Strathmore board."

Marc - How did you do the bricks?

Don

[finescalerr]

And this time did you simply stain the Strathmore prior to painting? This attempt really withstands close scrutiny. -- Russ

P.S.: I know you have threatened to do something like this for a couple of years and I'm really glad you followed through.

[finescalerr]

While we are waiting for Marc to follow up, I want to return to the original intent of this thread: Using printed cardstock to approach contest quality modeling. In this first of two images, how 1:48 scale printed cardstock compares to the wood and paint on Chuck Doan's 1:24 scale garage.

Russ

[finescalerr]

... And, in this photo, the unadorned 1:48 scale wall section I posted a few days ago (10 minute build with raw artwork and a little pastel chalk at some board joints) compared to the front wall of Chuck's 1:48 magnificent Red Oak garage.

Okay, Marc, back to your tutorial.

Russ

[DaKra]

Chuck seems to have an excellent grasp of the way that paint chips from wood.   As I mentioned earlier, the way paint fails seems influenced by the grain of the wood it adhered to, or maybe the brush strokes when it was applied, or both.  Something I've been paying a lot more attention to since this thread started! 

Much as I admire Marc's techniques, this "wood-influenced-chipping-pattern" is missing from his quick demos.   Russ's printed paper shows it very nicely.  The green sample is close to perfection.   Chuck, of course, shows it perfectly.

Chuck, mind telling, what do you look for, and how did you do it??   

Dave

     

[Frederic Testard]

Chuck looks for the place of God, Dave. And I think he got it.

[marc_reusser]

"The wood siding and the bricks are made of 4-ply Strathmore board."

Marc - How did you do the bricks?

Don

Don,

The bricks were made by first cutting the board into the proper/needed width strips (about 10" long), and then using the "Chopper" cutting them to the proper/needed length.  Each brick was then glued individually to another piece of 4-ply Strathmore. Two things I found pertinent to observe whenm doing this were:

1). Avoid mixing  "bricks" cut from different strips (no matter how hard you try the strips might end up being just a hair different, and tis could show).  

2). then cutting you will typically get a slightly sloped/angled cut, which flates at the bottom of the cut, so it is adviseable to ensure that this side is placed down, against the backing board.

The first row was laid against a straight edge, subsequent rows were spaced/placed using a piece of .010" styrene. I used yellow carpenters glue to attach the bricks. (if one desider to make the brick surface more uneven, one could achieve this by either using a brick made from slightly thicker board, or adding a small piece of single ply first, behind the brick, and then gluing the 4-ply brick in place.

Once set, I went over the bricks with a fiberglass pencil, and 400 or 600 sandpaper to soften the edges or slightly clean up any edges or spacing. I also used an exacto to carefully cut a spawl/spall or chip into an edge or corner here and there.

Once dry I did an overall coloring of a dark red Vallejo acrylic.....as I worked a bit wet/damp, this slightly softened the surface of the bricks, allowing me to emboss a random texture into them. This texturing was done using the broken ends of a piece of basswood that was the same size as the brick...and with varying pressure and angle, pressing it into the softened surface.

This coat was allowed to dry and then followed with varing colors and coats of more Vallejo acrylic.....lastly I randomly dusted on some colors of redish/brick and grey AGAMA and MIG pigments. Then the whole thing was sprayed with a heavy coat of Model-Master "Lusterless flat.....dried with a blow dryer.

With my fingertip I then worked some lightweight wall patch compound (the stuff that's comes ready to use in small tubs and is sort of "fluffy"), into the joints....the brick surface was wiped off with a soft cotten rag, and some wdide brushes were worked across the surface to provide some depth to the grout joints.  I was considering tinting the wall compound before adding it....but was worried it might stain the brick surface....so instead I used MIG "Panzer Grey Fading" pigment, and brushed it over the surface and into the grout joints....(You can't use Bragdon's for this, because it adheres too strongly to the brick surface and will discolor it)....extra pigmant on the brick surface was brushed off, and then "washed off" with a brush wet with "Odorless Turpentine" working in a vertical motion.  

....lastly.....one the entire piece was all assembled, the priks along wit the clap-boards were weathered (and unified) using CMK and MIG dust colored pigments.

The entire wall example, including the sign probably took me around 4 hours or so to do......some of that was definitely in the prep.,  thinking, and learning. The actuall painting and assembly probably took about half that.


Marc

[TRAINS1941]

Chuck looks for the place of God, Dave. And I think he got it.

I thought Chuck was God!!!

Jerry