The is a tunnel portal I scratch built and was hoping I might be able to get some paininting tips from the more experienced modelers here. Beeams and inside tunnel are balsa wood and planks are popcycle sticks, in case it makes a difference in painting method.
Ty
Hi!
Nice piece of work! Nothing beats good ol popsicle sticks!
I assume you are portraying a wooden portal. I think I would start with a light stain or brown Testors paint in a wash, and brush it down. The thing to remember is you can always go darker - but not lighter (learn from my mistake).
Once you settle on the stain/paint wash shade, then I would meld in some vertical dark black brown in the center of the portal - representing loco smoke residue. Of course steamers burning coal would have really blackened that center area, but so would oil burning steamers and diesels as well - just not as much.
Ty,
What look do you want? Stained wood? Weathered? Concrete? You might want to steer clear of staining since the different wood species will probably take stain differently. On the other hand, maybe that is the look you want. No matter what you use be sure to seal the entire portal first (front, back, top, bottom, etc.). Otherwise it is likely to warp over time as the untreated wood absorbs moisture from the air. Plain old sanding sealer from hour local hardware or paint store will do the trick.
Working with stain generally requires you wipe it down before the stain dries. That may be bit tricky with all the nooks and crannies in your portal. (Don’t get me wrong–they look great!) Paint would eliminate that complication and the different wood species problem but realistically some shade of concrete is probably the only appropriate color.
Good luck. Post a photo of the finished product.
Nice looking portal.
It’s a little late for this project, but if you plan another project where you may want to stain the wood, I would suggest staining the wood before assembly. As mentioned above, different woods take stain differently. Also, if you have gotten any glue on the surface, the stain won’t penetrate.
I’ve got a box of popcicle sticks, but haven’t built anything that I could use them on yet.
Good luck,
Richard
Thanks for the tips guys, much appreciated.
For some reason my signiture isn’t working anymore, it used to have my name in it. My name’s Lorne, not Ty. The “Ty” was a thank you…lol.
I was thinking of going with paint for this portal. Want to get a really old, weathered look. Abandoned would be a better discription. I’m doing a diarama of a small section of abandoned track in the middle of nowhere. It’ll have enough in it to work on a few different aspects of scenery. Grassy hill, rock faces, water, vegetation. This is my first attepmt at anyrthing like this, so the detail won’t be too high. more of a getting-my-feet-wet project. I’ll post a few picks once I’m done.
Thx,
Lorne
The guys above are right. Balsa and popsickle sticks will take stain very differently. Because of this, I would paint the whole thing with an acrylic wood sealant (available at art and craft stores). Probably will need a couple of coats. You can sand in between if you want, but the added texture from not doing so will probably enhance the appearance of the end product. For a painting suggestiom, put on a base coat of very dark brown. Then, dry brush on a liberal amount of gloss black, to simulate creosote preservative. Next, dry brush on some light tan and pale gray highlights. Finish it with a wasth of thinned flat black (about 10:1 ratio) and seal it with Dullcote or similar.
You said you wanted a weathered look. So, I would paint a base color of medium gray, and then use a thinned wash of brown on top of that. You can always apply more washes of brown if you think it needs more color. Then, carefully dab on thinned washes of black only to the upper center portion of the wood portal, and most of the inner portions of the tunnel.
You could use a grayish wash as the first coat of weathering color, dry brush white at the top edges of only the cross beams and diagonals. I would also consider adding some nuts, bolts, washers to the beams and rust them and allow a little rust to streak down from these in a couple places. Lastly you need soot above where the exhaust would blow up from the locomotives, more so for steam; but, still some from diesel. I would use the dry brushing technique to make the soot, also. I would also add some darker gray at the bottom of the portal where rain would splash dirt up onto the planking.
With all these tips I can really start to see this taking shape, if only in my head. Haven’t started painting it yet. Need to buy the paint still. I was thinking of adding quite a bit of moss to the bottom half of the portal.
After work tonight I’ll post some pics of this diarama. Only thing in place solid is the track and lake bed. Dry fitting the portal, raised land in places, and some the mountain mass (using crumpled newspaper) in order to get a better feel of where I want to take this. Before I place everything permanently, I need to paint the track (heavy rust), and add the ballast. Ballast it’s self will show as minimal due to the overgrown weeds and lack of maintanence. All going well, should look pretty good…for a first timer.
Lorne
Inside the tunnel does not matter, that will be a grimy black regardless of what color you use elsewhere. It is further clear that the frame work would naturally have been made from a different wood than the bulkheads, and so it would weather differently.
Interesting thing out here. The north side and the south side of power poles are different colors and markedly so. The south side gets bleached by the sun, the north side gets beat up by the build up of ice. On your portal the tops and bottoms of those beams will have weathered differently as would the battens directly below the beams.
The bottom line is, you will probably not go wrong whatever you do.
ROAR
This is the way us old timers do it. When you stain the wood first, the glue won’t show. If you stain it after it is built, you will find places where the stain won’t “take” on the wood because some glue has sealed it first.
Although if you seal the wood with an acrylic sealer, the presence or absence of glue on the paintable surfaces becomes a non-issue. The whole model will take stain or paint evenly. And incidentally, the word is spelled “diorama”.
I’ll be sure to remember that for my next project, ty.
Lol, my spelling has never been my strength. Right along with typing.
Lorne
Not sure what you mean by acrylic sealer, perhaps paint?
OP: Don’t be confused by the “take stain evenly”. A wood stain on paint will be like a wash, it won’t absorb into the wood like a normal wood stain on bare wood.