What is a good way to simulate paint on a boxcar etc. that has been faded, mainly white? Thanks, Mike
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leave it in an atic for a decade.
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I’ve seen someone do it with a q-tip and paint thinner. But I know there’s got to be an easier way If your a steaduy hand a slow powered sander might work. but don;t take the paint all the way off.
How about tring a paint “wash”. Much the same way we weather a car to look dirty…
Some people airbrush a lighter paint, or you can do powders, and you can use some very thined out oil paints. I use powders to do my fade job. It works good for me. I also like to give certain parts of the car to really look sun bleached. Heres a picture of a before and after:
I use a wash, one part paint to nine parts thinner, applied with an airbrush. That way you can build up the layers very gradually, until you get the right look. With the first couple of coats, you will notice hardly any difference, but as each layer dries you will see the the base colour gradually fade. Continue until you get the effect you want. If you apply several layers, you will move past “faded” towards “dirty”–fine, if that is the effect you want–just don’t overdo it.
What colour(s) to use? Partly that is a matter of preference, prototype, and the effect you’re after. I use Railroad Tie Brown and Grimy Black (Polly Scale) a lot. I’ve found that in most applications these colours give the best results–the brown in particular gives a very satisfactory faded look. I’ve never tried white, but I suspect it might not give the results you’d expect. In all cases, trial and error is your friend.
Spray with dullcoat. Let dry. Overspray with 70% alcohol. Then start the normal weathering methods. Be warned, fixing the new weathering with dullcoat will removed the faded look. You will need to not overspray with dullcoat or redo the alcohol application
The method that I use is, IMHO, easy and very effective. After a clear gloss coat and all the decals are on, I add one or two drops of white to my flat clear. It will fade the paint very evenly. You just build up coats until you get the effect you want. I figure I have to flat caoat it any way why not take care of dulling the paint some at the same time.
J.P.
PS Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this is done with an Air Brush
To simulated faded lettering on a freight car, i do the fllowing.
Example: box car with white lettering on box car red paint.
Paint the car with box car red, and apply decals. Later, spray a very light coat of box car red over the car. Lettering will look faded. Then, weather as desired. Easy.
I asked an artist friend about this once, a long time ago. I had a freshly painted vermillion (bright GN red) car that I wanted to fade. I figured on overspraying a thinned white. She said that that would just give me pink and that I should add some of the OPPOSITE color to my white if I wanted to also dull it. In this case, green. I never got around to trying it, but it sounded right.
Ed
That’s what I do.
These all have some faded paint (especially the orange AA in the last image), thanks in part to the method Robby discribes.
Depending on what you’re doing, somtimes you can airbrush very thinned off white over the car inbetween or before subsequent layers.
