OK, after I get the foam down and carved, its likely to still look like foam. How do you folks get it to look like earth? Do you cover it with Sculptamold? is painting it enough? What if I want raw earth areas not covered with ground cover?
If you take the time to sand or use a Surefoam tool to get rid of any unnatural angles on the foam, using a coat or two of latex paint is all you really need to get rid of the unnatural foam look. With some practice, you can even carve in any rock formation you would otherwise use plaster for.
I’m an advocate for using foam as a replacement for plasters of any kind on a layout. Witht he foam down and sitting there, begging to be carved into whatever formation you want, why bother with plaster at all?
As for “raw earth”, what would you do if you were using white plaster? You’d either paint it or add real soil. Do the same thing on the foam.
I’ll take the liberty of posting this great looking tunnel that our Atlas Forum friend Coal Train made of carved foam.
I can’t imagine a portal looking much better.[:)]
just be sure to use latex or acyrlic paint on the ffoam, as the solvents in Floquil or Testors will eat away at the foam (don’t ask me how I found this out!!![:(][:(])
Acrylic paint is Polly Scale, Tamyia, and Badger Model Flex.
Goof grief, save the expensive stuff for the rolling stock! Cheap household interior latex paint is all you need for scenery! If you want to paint special effects or rock formations onto the scenery base layer, use cheap latex craft paints!
In our club (Northern NJ N-Trak) our foam “master” uses inexpensive laytex caulk (brown) to smear over the sculpted foam to fill in gaps and act as a base for ground cover, etc. He uses a flat tool and wets it with water when spreading it around. Inexpensive, fast and looks pretty good.
I agree, but all those paints aren’t expensive.
Buy a five gallon bucket of joint compound. Stain it, paint it, whatever. I had good
results and the price is right. Good Luck!!
On this business of paint, household latex paint works well on foamboard, but I was using Office Depot foam core posterboard (1/4 inch) for ballast strip/roadbed, and painting that with latex paint caused it to curl. The product is really cardstock sandwiching a thin layer of foam.
I glue to the foam board using foam-compatible construction adhesive, and the solution is to make sure their is a uniform coat of glue on the underside of the posterboard roadbed. I painted the top of the roadbed with Killz brand oil-based primer and then followed with latex paint, and things seem OK. I haven’t tried the Killz primer directly on the foam board yet – might want to check.
Agreed,
here’s some of the things I did with foam.
http://www.crtraincrew.com/layouts/dan.html
Great stuff, I just use acrylic paint, though I rough up the surface of the foam with a rasp so that it’s not perfectly smooth for the ground, rocks I usually sand to a smooth surface. Best of all, you can glue peices together and sand that down as well.