I have tried, believe me, I tried, but I just cannot seem to get the perfect effects Tom is doing with his weathering. I bought brand new brushes and cut them blunt to try some stippling of rust like that, but mine still comes out too thick. How many cars did you have to weather till you got the method down right Tom?
That's the thing I have noticed about watercolors. I tend to do best with thinner mixtures and then just layer the colors up over time if I want something darker. Watercolors do not do well with a "paint by numbers" approach. With watercolors, it's always easier to add some color than try to take it away, and the wonderful thing with watercolors is that you can get rich color results simply by layering up colors over successive layers in thinned mixtures. Most of my watercolor experience is with paper. I am looking at some of this and now I want to weather some of my... sorry... N scale stuff. Good topic! Adam
As Tom has wrote in other places, he has weathered over a 100 models in different scales so far. I'll bet that his first attempts was not much better then ours are right now, or? I often wonder about how good some people are doing their modelling. And why I can't get it like them do. But then I remember that often these master modellers have been at it for over 20-40 years and I have only been at it for about little over 3years now. That makes me sleep better at night knowing that I probably have some years off learning before I master the techniques to the fullest. So practise makes master, keep it up and you will se the results come in is my guess.
Keep it up guys. I've weathered so many models that I barely remember them all, and I've been at it since 2004 or so. There is no secret to it, I pretty much use acrylics and just paint them on. Here is one of my first attempts from years ago: http://www.mannresearch.com/rr/milw/milwbox_02.jpg I also have a photography article and a article about weathering an ATSF loco in NScaleRailoading. There are some helpful hints in those.
This one for photography: http://www.nscalesupply.com/NAN/NAN-NSR0611.html This one for weathering: http://www.nscalesupply.com/NAN/NAN-NSR0703.html
Wouldn't be surprised. I know that BR Rail Blue was carefully selected to minimize the visibility of dirt.
Are you getting all these awesome cars from Tom for your personal collection, or is Tom just mailing you the pictures? I'm beginning to get serious jealous Jürg after seeing some off the work up close on your visit to us in April.
Hi Torsja I've send Tom some of my Engines and Rolling Stock and he send it back to me on a bi-weekly base. At the moment he works on a AZL UP SD40-2 Snootnose. Next will be a AZL SP SD45, a Rio Grande SD40T-2, the small Zthek SP SW-1 and a bunch of Freudenreich PS2 Hoppers. On the list are also the AZL SP Steamers including the Cabforward. My goal is to have 90% of my AZL Collection weathered in the next 12 month. Be sure that I'll bring a lot of them to Oslo next Year.
I'm looking forward to next year again Jürg. This time I think we should have more practical exercises on the show, like weathering techniques and wearies building exercises. Perhaps a contest during the two days in something? I would like to make the show more for the actual builders and Z-Scale runners and not just for showing off to the public. Perhaps I should call it ZMOD meeting (open for public) and not just ZMOD Show so that the public don't expect us to just talk to them so that we don't get to play so much with each others "toyz". Perhaps have the show open for "ordinary" public only for a couple off hours late in the day. And the rest is just for us to engage in conversations and building or what ever we want. Sorry this got a bit off topic ....
I try light weathering with chalks, and it looks pretty good. I also try heavy weathering with mix results. One looks ok, but the other one looks awful. Its a good thing I used acrylic paints, so I wash it off.
Torsja, we could "import" John Cubbin and Tom Mann to Oslo for some workshop Now we need a sponsor. How about Hans?
like the cars, jurg. especially the SP cylindrical. very nice. have you sent tom the cab-forward? he would be the one to do it! dave f.
Thanks for the kind words David. Yes the Cabforward is on the to-do list for Tom but first I'll send him the GS3.
