Just starting some scenery and laid down a Little Plaster Cloth; I want to try and paint this area with those small Acrylic ones you can get in Walmart; Am I able to do this or should I put a little Sculptamold over the Plaster Cloth.
Loved this Plaster Cloth; Barely any mess at all.
thanks again, Cary
I got a bucket of joint compound and I mix some of the compound with some water to thin it down and use a paint brush to apply it to help fill the holes and make it look more realistic. I get the cheap bottles of water colors from Pat Catans and mix it in with the joint compound an water to give it some base color. You can also apply the joint compound directly to your scenery and carve or build what looks realistic to you if your not in too big a hurry to finish it in one night.Jim.
Cary,
Don’t waste time trying to use those small bottles. I use inexpensive latex wall paint at Walmart or a discount Home Improvemewnt store. I have been using Dutch Boy ‘Potting Soil’ - Real good for Midwest earth. You may need to use something else depending on the area you are modeling.
As mentioned in the previous post, painting the plaster cloth with joint compound will fill in the small pin holes. I buy a 18 lb bag of the 90 minute stuff and mix a little with warer. It will not ‘set up’ real fast like the pre-mix stuff, giving you more ‘working time’.
Last time I bought wall paint at Lowes I wouldn’t consider it inexpensive at $29.00 a gallon…but after thinking about it,it is cheaper than buying all those small WS earth tone paints @ a few dollars per ounce.
I don’t like how plaster cloth looks if painted without some kind of additional smoothing applied to the surface. Sculptamold works, or you can apply plaster by hand, or maybe drywall mud - anything to keep it from looking like painted plaster cloth.
As for paint, I had the local Walmart mix up a gallon of interior flat latex in a suitable earth tone, and it was about $15. I use the acrylic craft paints for coloring rocks, and the latex everywhere else.
I used to use the Woodland Scenic pigments the first time around. Then I found a cheaper alternative. The poster paint sold at Michaels at $2 for a 16-oz bottle works just as well as acrylic paint. It also mixes readily with acrylic paint, cleans up easily and is non toxic (a plus if you have small children around).
Whether or not I paint the plaster cloth depends on what scenic treatment it’s going to get. If it will be covered with ground foam and vegetation, I just paint it. If it’s going to be open land, then I just thin some patching plaster and brush it on. One of the things I’ve done in the past to make it look like land with small rocks is to sprinkle dry plaster with a flour sifter (buy your own, don’t use the wife’s. You can imagine how I know this). Then spray it with water. Once dry, then I paint it.
I wear surgical gloves when applying plaster cloth. If you keep your hands VERY wet, you can get the cloth very smooth. I use flat brown paint from Lowes.
This is a swamp under construction. I dug into a piece of 2-inch pink foam to get depressions, and used scraps of foam to add elevation. Then I covered most of the area with plaster cloth. There are some rock castings I put in, and the large dead tree is loosely placed to provide a reference point for the photos.
I mixed up a batch of Gypsolite, a gritty-textured plaster. Gypsolite is naturally a light gray, but for this section I squirted in some dark brown craft paint. It doesn’t take much at all if you use a dark color. The end result is the light tan base of structured plaster.
I used craft paint again for more color. For most of the scene, I used a thin wash of green paint in water, applied in a camouflage pattern. Since the center of this area will be water, I used full-strength dark green and black paint to get the deeper areas colored with a much darker look.
I’ve skipped a few steps, but after adding ground foam, Envirotex for water, turf and some plants and animals, I’ve got a swamp that does not attract mosquitoes.
You can get gallons of flat browns for free or almost free at most paint stores (big box stores ussually charge $5), these are the opps paint!!!
Unless you took the time to really smooth out your plaster cloth – so that you can’t see the cross-hatch pattern – I would cover it with a thin layer of plaster or Sculptamold. Murphy’s Law of Layouts ensures that you will be able to see that pattern right through any ground cover you put down. Been there, done that, No T shirt. I use soupy casting plaster and smooth it with my fingers (with a latex glove on). Unless you’re doing this before the plaster cloth is fully cured, spray the area with wet water first, so that the plaster cloth doesn’t suck the water out of your new plaster and make it crumbly.
As far as getting paint – by all means, try to find a cheap can of interior latex that someone returned. The store will get rid of it cheaply. If not, buy the cheapest you can. Buy by the quart unless you have an extremely large layout. Even though the small containers may seem cheap, they add up. The WS stuff works well, but it’s cost prohibitive for any kind of large area.
Thanks for all the Help & Info and like that Swamp Mr Beasley; the initial reason of just trying some of the Walmart small bottles were practice/experiments. I should probably go get some Earth Colored latex and different tones would make sense from some small bottles. (Poster Paint or Pat Catans I have never heard of?)
I have a 25 LB box of Sculptamold that I got for $20.00 from an Art store; I think they goofed up on the pricing but good for me 
which I probably try a thin layer. I like that Dutch Boy Potting Soil idea but not sure if I’ve ever seen it around my area. I have used that Ground Goop (Celluclay/Vermiculite & Glue I think) for a cattle yard myself & dauhgter worked on last year.
I’ll try a small area in the next day or so I hope and put in a couple pics and let me know what you think?
Thanks Again, Cary
I used Sanded Grout. You mix it up to a consistency like paint and brush it over the plaster (or in my case, paper towels brushed on both sides with white glue). It comes in several shades of brown so you can pick which looks best for the area you’re modelling. One nice thing is that it has some texture, so it looks like dirt or sand - it isn’t smooth like painted plaster hills. This texture looks good in areas you don’t cover in grass, and it also helps the grass stick where it’s supposed to when adding groundcover.