I read a technique from an out of print Kalmbach book where the author (Art Curren) used a solution of wet water and lamp black to create what he called “Acid Rain Weathering” and thought this is similar to using a black India Ink and wet water solution.
Has anyone used “Lamp Black” in their weathering techniques? If so I would like to hear about your use of this material.
BTW, I found an art supply store that sells 4oz vol. container of the stuff for $4.95.
Regards
hmm… sounds interesting. Though I was under the assumption that “Lamp Black” was the oily/sooty stuff that collected on the inside of oil lamps when you lit them and they burned ‘dirty’…
If that is indeed what they’re selling (or a modern refinement thereof) it is a pretty thick/gooey substance (similar to if you break a pen… though pen ink is a thicker still)… I bet that lampblack and india ink are both close in the methods and uses though, with the lampblack probably being faster.
note – this is all based on the assumption that the soot I’m thinking of is in fact lampblack. I haven’t used it ever, but there are a number of decorative oil lamps around the house (parents seem to collect them, or might have at one time) and I would get stuck cleaning them…
Dan,
To answer your inquiry into how “Lamp Black” is made, the pigment supply company lists this description:
Lamp black is a type of carbon black obtained from the soot of burned fat, oil, tar, or resin. Lamp black is a soft brownish- or bluish-black pigment that is very stable and unaffected by light, acids and alkalis. Our lamp black is of high purity made in modern oil furnaces and exhibits a slight bluish hue.
You can make your own lamp black by just letting the sooty smoke from a burning candle build up on a flat plate and just scrape it off with a single edge razor blade onto a piece of paper. Save it to a small babyfood or other jar, and you have a ready-made means of weathering in powder form, or mix it with a few drops of 90% rubbing alcohol and drip or paint on with a small brush. Works pretty well. You can do the same with a really rusted piece of steel using the same technique.
Experiment on some scrap first.
The first thing I would test is how it reacts to handling after it dries or even if it dries.
It will be totally dry in powder form, and even when mixed with a few drops of alcohol it will still dry quickly, and will not react with plastics!
One thing I recently discovered is gouache - an untra-concentrated form of watercolor pigment. It dries really flat, not even the slightest bit of ‘sheen’ to it. I’m using that for soot stains on my locos.
Through some other research I found out that India Ink is made with some Lamp Black or Carbon Black. So I guess the India Ink and wet water solution is a modern day form of the old Lamp Black and wet water solution. On another forum I was told that Lamp Black was commonly used by modelers in the 40’s and 50’s for weathering.
Thanks for all the info and input!