first time I tried to weather some of my cars, to be honest.. I DON'T like them. I want to know what would you have done (and how) to improve the looks of these cars. these pics, I had a weathered version and a orginal to compare
Not bad for your first time! The only car I dont like is the SP with the lettering all but removed. (Just a little too heavy for my taste. I prefer a lightening of the lettering better.) Other then that, your doing great.
They look good to me as well. Maybe add a little darker "dirt" lower down on the sides and bottom. A little goes a long way, and you can always add a little moreif needed takin it off is the tough part if you add to much! I learned this lesson the HARD WAY! If only my first ones looked as good as yours i wouldnt have had to redo em! So don't get discouraged. Happy Modelingcool:
OC Engineer JD: I wasnt tryin to get rid of the decal. But after attempt #6 I kinda scrub a lil TOO hard...lol Well I used a airbrush (also for the first time... thats another thread..lol) and diluted the white for the faded look. Then i used chalks to weather the car.. What do you use to weather your cars?
I would first recommend a trick Gary Hinshaw came up with: Your SP boxcar is not only faded it is showing signs of white paint that was used to thin it, first, mix acrylic paint with windshield washer fluid rather than water- the washer fluid will not streak as much. Second, make it thinner and make more passes, and third, don't use only white, add a dab of a yellow or orange paint to your white to warm the color and give it a dusted/rusted/faded whitening. I have tried Gary's method and it is great. All I learned about weathering I learned here: http://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?board=13.0 the guys at that board are some real pros and have given instruction on use of acrylics, chalks, powders, and salt! But I warn you- once you get started its hard to stop!:mwink: my best, Jan
I like using Bragdon Chalks, and use them almost 100%. And I use an airbrush too. I get those little micro brushes and use them alot too.
I think you're off to a great start mjc205. To follow-up on Jan's post about fading, there is a class of artist colors that have "transparent" pigments (seems like an oxymoron, I know) which make them excellent for fading. Here is some more info on that: http://therailwire.net/forum/index.php/topic,16573.0.html The single most useful reference source I have found is Rich Yourstone's 4-page weathering article in the July/August 2004 issue of N Scale Railroading, which can still be had from the publisher and from numerous on-line shops. His methods are quite simple and his results are extremely convincing. To me, the thing that stands out about his work is his color selection, especially the grime and rust colors he uses. To this end, refer often to prototype photos and try to copy what you see. This is a case where it pays *not* to be original. I'm a big fan of Bragdon powders too - much better than ordinary pastel chalks IMHO because they are ground very fine and they have a dry adhesive blended in with them, so they're much more forgiving of being handled. Maybe Jerry could post a link to some of his SP sugar beet gons that were weathered with these powders. I remember them being very well done, but can't find them now.. Keep it up and post more! -Gary
Testors Acryl has a "Dust" color that lightens nicely. You have to get used to it because when it goes on wet the effect doesn't occur until it dries.
Nice work for the first or even tenth try. I would- 1. make sure that I weather the insides of the left side cars in the first photo. 2. the lateral white streaks on the boxcars, especially the one on the right, do not look natural. The deterioration of the paint on a car is generally vertical, not horizontal. If you are simulating rust on the corrugated areas of the doors, white is not right. 3. you have rather large rust areas on the covered hoppers and they are all in one color. I think it would look better with a slight variation of rust color to indicate older and newer rust. Also, the rust would probably look better if it ran down to the bottom of the car instead of 3/4 of the way down. 4. Bragdon does have the self adhesive. You might find regular soft pastel ground up on a 400 grit or finer sandpaper equally small in particle size and just about as adhesive. I use this chalk and the grind almost exclusively and unless you are handling your cars with fingers coated with olive oil, it won't go anywhere, with or without a coat of sealant. If it does rub off a bit, just do some more chalk. Bragdon is pretty pricey compared to regular chalk. 5. never overdo it. It is a lot easier to add more than to try to cleanly remove what you consider to be too much. 6. Don't be repetitive and make an assembly line of car shells to weather. In any line of cars, there will be some newer ones and some older, some that spent more time in a wet or dry climate, etc.. If you knock off ten cars at a time, the tendency, consciously or not, will be repetition of almost exactly the same weathering patterns on each. Please post more as you try more weathering. BTW- for heavy rust areas near seams, try a little bit of OIL based pastel chalk. It will give that really boiled up, flaked rusted look to places that would warrant it.
The problem is that you are forgetting the effect of the atmosphere on how we perceive "weathering". There is dust in the air which causes distant objects to loose resolution to your eye. Short of running the vacuum in reverse :tb-biggrin:, you can mimic this effect by airbrushing "dirt" (that's the PollyS color) onto your car AFTER you add streaks and such (streaks also get dirty over time!). This also chalks out (titanium white is the base of paint) the colors on your cars, fading them in the "sun" just like the real ones.
I'm certainly no expert on weathering, but I did want to mention that I think the hoppers in the first photo look terrific...
Although I have not tried to do any weathering, I think it would be all about letting gravity do the work for you, mixing the correct colors very thin, let them run, fogging with the airbrush to look like dirt, chalks to create the dusted look, I think I could probably do it, maybe someday I'll try it. fatalxsunrider4
2nd Attempt Haven't been in the mood to try again until now. Right after I made the orginal post, I was on my way to get some more canned air, A little teenager rear-ended me at a stop light doing about 45 because she was texting on her phone.... SOOOOO.... I bought myself a aircompressor last night and did some weathering. These came out better to me, but still not good enough. *sigh*
Sorry to hear about the accident. Hope you are okay. That's quite a rough impact. You are a perfectionist. I think they are first-rate!
I think they look great too - my favorite is the middle boxcar but they're all quite nice. It would be great if you could post some closer photos of these so we can really appreciate them. [Maybe a sheet of white paper in the background too. ] Man, I hope you don't suffer any ill effects from the collision! -Gary
