Okay - finished a good range of hills/mountains. Used bead foam and carved to shape. Ready for painting and looking for suggestions. Thinking a latex paint but somewhat thinned with water to soften the color (sort of color wash)? (Use a flat finish right?). Any tricks / ideas for shading with color variances? Any suggestions to improve realism?
My experience is that we tend to guess incorrectly about the colour we use for “terrain” or ground/soil. It is usually too brown and too dark…way too dark.
Thinning the paint is not a good choice in my view as it reduces, or thins, the paint’s ability to provide an adhesive substrate to any ground foam applied to it. The idea of using the acrylic latex paint, apart from its foam friendliness, is to provide a medium of adhesion for the foam. That is why the advice is generally to paint, then sprinkle the foam immediately. You can overspray the foam with diluted matte medium or white or yellow glues diluted later for added bonding, or when you cover what you first applied in the way of foam with secondary and tertiary colours of foam for good effect.
Try a light tan with some gray. Paint a section and see what it looks like dry…just a sample patch. If it is too dark, or too much of one colour, balance the mix in the can with some white and the colour to be enhanced, and then redo.
[#ditto] Start with lighter colors. Craft paint works well full strength. A watered down wash will not stick well to foam. It’s easier to darken a light color than lighten a dark color. You might want to do a little spot and take some pics to make sure your colors look right in photos.(if that matters to you)
If you are going to have any exposed rock, this is the time to paint it. I used a base color of medium tan and several washes of diluted acrylic paint. If you dilute the paints with rubbing alcohol, they dry much faster. Here is a hill that I did with diluted artists paints sprayed on. After my final wash dried, I sprinkled ground foam and sprayed with scenic cement. Of course, if your aren’t doing rocks, this won’t help you.
To get a texture, I sometimes paint on a coat of my version of Ground Goop. Unless the carving is extreemly intricate, GG gives a nicer texture. I use house paint for color, premixed lightweight drywall mud, sawdust and a little Lysol and enough water to give me the texture I like. If I want just texture and color, I make it watery. If I want to add some contour, I use it thick.
I also use ground goop. I use 1 pt. brown paint, 1 pt. vermiculite (get it at Lowe’s) 1 pt. paper mache, and 3/4 pt/. elmer’s glue.
Here’s a construction photo, after I sprinkled on real dirt and ground foam.
Art - thanks for the sharing. I already coated the styrofoam with a textured ceiling paint (off-white) - so I think I have pretty good texture that masks the styrofoam beads (at least I like the results). Maybe I should have colored the ceiling paint? Thinking I would just paint over now with latex paint and apply ground foam as I go.
The technique I use is to start with the dark colors first, soil, etc, followed by asorted greens for grasses and weeds augmented with a sifting of WS foam of similar colors.
It depends on where you are of course. Where I live (east-central MN) the dirt is black, not tan or light brown. It also depends how you want the end result to look. Bill what’s-his-name, that German painting teacher on PBS, always used to say “you’ve got to have DARK to show light”. In previous layouts set in winter, I’ve started by painted the white plaster hills flat black, then adding grasses of different yellows and greens, and then snow over that. Some people would leave the plaster and maybe add some snow or something over it, but I think doing the layers works better. But with so many model RR things, it’s probably best to try several methods and see what ‘looks right’ for you. [:)]
I concede your point, wjstix. A person should try to render what they know and can see. To that end, jfugate’s realistic scenery tutorial is good for teaching us how to use the outdoors, photos, and colour samples for an accurate rendering.