Can anyone suggest good earth colored latex paint to use for over styrofoam as a base color? I know everyone has a favorite color, but could someone suggest a formula and brandname. The soils around hear (Northern Michigan) look really dark. I don’t want to end up doing this a half dozen times to get right like I did the concrete color. Thanks in advance.
Larry
As you have already said, the Earth is different colors, so you’ll need to determine from a color chip at a paint store what you want them to mix.
Any latex paint would be safe to use on styrofoam, so the only thing you need to determine is the color and quantity that you need. I’ve also used the Acrylic paints from the crafts area of Wal-mart.
I hope you will take a hint from me. The colour you think is just right at the store where you are looking at a colour chip will be about two shades too dark on your layout if my experience is anything to go by. By all means, pick what you think is the right colour, but be prepared to go over a first section, after the paint dries and you can see what it looks like under your lighting, with paint to which you have added a fair bit of white.
You indoor lighting, unless you have prepared your layout space with lots of it, will probably render your paint quite dark.
Because you should be covering all of your foam with scenery, trees, grass, weeds, roads, rocks, dirt, etc, it should be a dark brown, just in case a space is left exposed.
I see that Lou Sassi uses Tobacco Brown which looks extremely dark, but then alot of people are using a lighter tan colors. I am modeling the C&O coal hauling operations in Virginia/West Virginia, but have no clue what the soil color is like. I may go with a medium brown and a pint of white to lighten things up if it looks too dark. I have tons of recessed lighting in my room.
Since the paint is really only a foundation color, getting it “right” isn’t really important, any tan should do. But having said that, I took a bunch of paint sample chips out along the former right-of-way of my modelled road on a day that was heavily overcast but dry, and laid them out over a patch of typical dirt. This was very easy for me to do since I live only a ten-minute walk from the right of way (which is now a bike trail). It worked very well for me and looks to my eye exactly like the typical soil color. Some visitors have commented that it isn’t “brown” enough (there is a lot of clay in the soil around here) - an interesting test of perception versus reality, and potentially an argument that a medium-dark tan is better than the “right” shade.
I just use a basic loamy looking brown.
Well I certainly can’t help you with this one since I’m green-brown (among other things) colorblind. I’ve had to treat my paint buying trips the same as my clothes shopping - my wife comes along and picks colors out for me. Otherwise, people might start asking why all my terrain is orange…
Greens and browns eh? I have trouble with blues and grays. I can see only a few shades of blue and I can see dark gray and light gray. The shades in between show up as black, white and silver.
I use a color called Burt Clay and got it from Home Depot. I mix it in with the drywall compound to give it a light brown. Makes it easy to cover with the color I want. Helps with working the drywall compound as well, little thinner.
Cuda Ken
I used a rather dark flat brown that was on sale cheap. I do not expect any of it to be actually visible on the finished layout. I painted all my benchwork tops because it helped to visualize scenery by getting rid of the plywood color. And if something scratches away at the finished surface at least a somewhat plausible color will be seen until I can cover it up again.
I will say this – I thought I could lighten my very dark brown with some left over pure white paint and get a sort of tan color. My mistake! The result was a sort of eggplant purple. My wife helpfully showed me a colorwheel that showed where I went wrong. Fortunately I had tested with a small sample rather than just dump white into the brown can.
Dave Nelson
I really don’t think the color is all that important. The paint serves as an adhesive for my first layer of ground cover so very little of it shows through. Any thing that looks remotely earth colored will do. All it really has to do is not allow the white of the plater, the blue of the foam, or the bare plywood to show through any bare spots in the ground cover. I would pay much more attention to the colors of your ground cover to get your “dirt” the right color. WS makes three that I use. “Soil” which does a good job of representing rich topsoil, “Earth” which is medium brown, and “Earth Blend”, which is yellow-brown shade. You can custom blend these to create your own shade. Even this initial layer of ground cover is probably going to be covered with various turf and ground foams so it just needs to be close enough. The secret to convincing scenery is in layering, starting with your base paint, followed by your earth cover, and then grass and weed covers. Each layer should allow some of the previous layer to show through, creating a natural look. It’s different if you are trying to model a manicured lawn but in nature, you need lots of texture to make it look convincing.
Hi 69 comaro
I suggest you do what I did and go to your local paint supplier and talk to them the end result will be they can tell you a colour close to your soil colour I used the local home soil colour
Its only a lets cover everything and get rid of the bare wood paint in my case two colours where chosen coco fudge + 3f and a green called bottle brush.
I painted my cork under lay citadel fortress grey before laying the track as well.
I found this combination of things did the job nicely until proper scenery could be done.
So something resembling your home soil and vegetation colours will do it will all be covered up once the scenery proper is done
regards John
I used a sandstone color, but when I mixed it with my goop compound ( basic ground color over the shell ) I came out with slight variences in the color from batch to batch. While observing the areas I model I determoned that this was ok. Currently my layout looks like it could be set in Palm Springs as is but I am looking for Cajon Pass, so when I add foilage and dead grass, probably some burns too, it will come around. I have been working in Palm Springs this week and you would be surprised as to how much variation in the color of terain, so don’t be too picky.
Click on my WWW below to see my layout.
Thanks to everyone for their input.
Larry