Global Scale Modeller

RangerNeil wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 10:33 pm That's very, very impressive thus far!! How did you achieve the wood grain effect on the flooring - it really looks like it is wood.

RangerNeil wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 10:33 pm That's very, very impressive thus far!! How did you achieve the wood grain effect on the flooring - it really looks like it is wood.

AirCadet424 wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:56 pm Thanks for all of the positive comments guys, very much appreciated.

A couple of you have asked how I painted my woodgrain effect on the cockpit floor of this build? I have cut a piece of plastic sheet to show a small tutorial by way of a series of pictures. I can't do a video but hopefully all will be clear below:

First I primed my piece using Tamiya's 'Fine Grey Primer':



Next to spray the base colour, which is done using acrylics, as the top colour will be in oils. It is essential that the base colour can't be diluted by the top coat when it is applied, which if the base coat had been done in oils or enamels, it would be removed by the solvent in the oil paints and ruin the effect. Acrylics and oils don't have any effect on each other and can't mix or be dissolved by one another, so work well with each other as separate processes. The paints I've used for my base coat are shown below and are mixed in a roughly 50/50 ratio but it's all down to personal choice as to which colour you want the base to be, bearing in mind that different woods show different colours so you'll need to play with the mix ratios a bit to get what you want:



The mix was then airbrushed onto the workpiece and left to dry completely:



Next, to mix a top colour using oil paints. I prefer to use Winsor & Newton 'Alkyd' oils as they are fast drying oils and if applied thinly can dry in as little as half an hour when placed in a warm location such as an airing cupboard. Again top colour is personal choice depending on the type of wood you are trying to portray. Of the five paints below I used only three for this piece, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna and a touch of Indian Yellow, mixing in varying ratios until I got a satisfactory colour. I do sometimes use the other two but not for this demonstration:





Using the 'Sansodor' low odour solvent shown below, the mix was then carefully diluted to a sort of single cream consistency, which can be seen in the second photo:





Using a soft chisel brush, which is the perfect brush for this technique, the mix is then painted over the acrylic base colour in the direction that you want the grain to flow. It helps if you use a brush that isn't as wide as the workpiece and which then requires you to make two or more passes, which in turn leaves a very realistic darker line of paint where the two strokes touch each other, something very similar to the darker lines that you often see on sawn wood and which can be seen in the photos below. It may takes several strokes going over the piece several times until you get something that you are pleased with in terms of a realistic grain:







Before the thinned oil paint dries you then need to start accentuating some of the lines by using various other brushes such as coarse Hog hairs, soft liners and even cocktail sticks and by making marks in the oil paint layer that leaves the base colour showing through. For this piece I only used the thin tipped black brush, which had been dipped in the Sansodor solvent then dabbed on a tissue to take most of it off. It is also good to randomly clear away the oil paint in small ovals to represent the light shades of wood around a 'knot'. Then I darken the oil paint mix slightly to add the darker centres to the knots plus a few random dots and marks elsewhere in the wood which represent where smaller shoots had started to form in the tree trunk. Try not to have your knots and other marks looking too uniformly spaced as it will look unnatural, random and uneven is best! After I was happy with the look the piece was left to dry completely:





The piece was then sealed using thinned Winsor & Newton 'Galeria' Satin Varnish through an airbrush and again left to dry completely, after which the final sheen was achieved by brushing it with 'Future' liquid floor polish, which helps to bring out the grain, making the colours 'pop'!:



And there we have it, quite simple really but practice makes perfect as they say? Mine is painted using my own imagination, but you could also find an image on the internet of the wood grain that you want to replicate and just copy the pattern on that?

Hope that helps explain how to make your own woodgrain so that you will not have to buy those expensive woodgrain decals or PE sheets that seem to be all the rage at the moment!

Kev.

RangerNeil wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:28 am Just saw one of these on the dread Evilbay. - a "started kit" but the seller said everything was there and verified against the sprue diagrams. Closed tonight at £152!! I got outbid in the final few seconds