I’m struggling to come up with the right color for concrete. I’m not that pleased with Polyscales aged concrete, it looks too something (I can’t put my finger on it) and I’m not crazy about the ‘regular’ concrete offerings from companies. I know the color probably varies from section to section of the country, I’m in the southeast and most of the concrete I see is a light greyish but on the warm side more than a cool color.
Do you have a favorite, one you buy ready made or that you mix yourself? If so what’s the brand/recipe and a photo would help also.
I take white acrylic, Jarrell, add a smidgen of black (1 part black to 10 parts white), and add a half-smidgen of ‘tan’ to it. Mix well, and paint your surface that hopefully has some detail on it…raises and depressions, expansion gaps as you would see in poured concrete…that type of thing, maybe some wood form lines.
It won’t look right, especially under some lighting. From there, thin white or grey washes, or spritz with some light India Ink weathering wash. Also, some older concrete has that dark streaking on it, sort of from oxidized leaves rotting in the spring after the snow melts and the stains run over abutments or steps. Eventually it leaves blackish smudges that run down like rust stains do on girders.
I didn’t weather this abutment, but here is is in direct sunlight two summers ago. The plastic abutments were kitbashed from parts of an unused Modern Coaling Tower from Walthers. I cut them to shape, glued them, and painted with with the mix described above. The only weathering in this case was some acrylic paint ‘rust’ streaks from runoff from the bridge shoes.
Jarrell … For building kits molded in gray plastic, I spray for a rattle can with Rust-oleum Camouflage 1917 Khaki. That is the color on my Union Station and some of my downtown buildings. I also used it on my plastic models of concrete bridges. If you look at my city thread, you can see what I did.
For streets, I use latex paint mixed by the hardware store guy for me, and it is gray color. I weather with acrylic paint.
When I was building the cat house, I had a similar problem. I broke off a piece of concrete and brought it to the hardware store and said “here, match this.”
Well, even that is not a perfect match, but if you look more closely, you will see that there are many colors in the concrete, while there is only one in the paint. Anyway, the cat did not object to the color that I used.
Lion (and a few others) are absolutely correct. Concrete is not a color, and therefore no concrete color paint will look right. concrete is a group of different colors all right next to each other… I find it to be one of the hardest things to get right in the hobby.
I generally use a light gray as a starting color and then lightly mist two or three darker greys from a distance onto the model. The key here is lightly, as you want small specs of the other colors. I have also started with dark grey and then used lighter greys as contrast. A small amount of weathering powders in appropriate colors can also help. Another point is that I have never seen two batches of concrete that look exactly alike. Contrast is a good thing.
I tried to find some photos I know I have somewhere of the concrete I have done, but the best I could come up with are the concrete steps at the Bed and Breakfast.
Thank you all for the help and the pictures. I know what you mean when you say concrete is not one color, and that is the problem. I was looking closely at my driveway just today in bright sun and I saw at least 3 or 4 major colors and a host of smaller ones What I’m currently working on is Walther’s Cornerstone Concrete Street system and it is right up front on the layout and about chest high. I spray painted it a color that looks very similar to aged concrete but I’m not happy with it because it just doesn’t look right to me. I found one of those plastic bottles of, I think the name is SmoothCoat at Hobby Lobby and while it looked to be just the right shade of light gray in the store when I tried it on a spare piece it’s just too much on the blue side.
I’m beginning to think the secret is in getting as close as you can with a base color and the weathering makes the final difference.
This has been the hardest color for me to come up with in all my model painting.
Like you I also had trouble finding a concrete paint color I liked. I found a Testor’s Model Master that I liked, Flat Gull Grey. Testors paint number FS 36440. Its sold both in the bottle and in the rattle can.
In the pic, if you look past the substation and at the power plant itself you will see the Testors. Take a close look at the lentils on the structure. Oh and the concrete pads in the substation are Flat Gull Grey as well.
Concrete like asphalt varies in color based on a number of factors. Fresh, modern day concrete is mostly gray. Older and weathered concrete tends to show more of the color of the sand/aggregate that was used in the mix. I look at many of the sidewalks and bridges I knew as a kid in St. Louis and the coarse orangish/brown sand on the surface is hardly concrete colored at all. Likewise, concrete made with a red aggregate has a redish hew as it weathers. So, I guess the answer to the post is depends on location, era, new or old concrete, and how it was finished (aggregate at surface or covered with a thin layer of cement cream.
Given that it’s so variable, I doubt there’s any one colour that would keep everyone happy.
I like to use Jo Sonja’s acrylic colour ‘Linen’ as my base colour. Here’s some neat, alongside a bit of white foamboard to give you an idea of the colour, and also mixed with black.
In some places I’ve added a speck of raw sienna or red or even blue to it. For my purposes, it’s a great starting point, and can look good straight from the bottle as well.
When I was in my teens in the late '70s, I used to build a lot of airplane models (and some armor.) I’d often build dioramas for them. For concrete I tried painting it a light grayish/tan color. Then I laid some newspaper on the floor and placed the concrete parts on it. I held a can of reddish/brown spray paint about 3 or 4 feet above the parts and gave a couple of quick bursts, letting the paint particles float down onto the parts and giving it a speckled look. It looked pretty good.
Most concrete paint color is too gray. Look at sidewalks around where you live. You’ll see that they are not gray. What happens is that the sun bleaches it much lighter, and the sand in the mix starts to wear through the top. What you need to do is paint a light gray color and than apply a highly thinned wash of a tan/beige paint on top of the gray.
Rich, you’re right. I have smaller parking lots and work areas around buildings that are concrete. See photo below.
I did these in ‘aged concrete’ and weathered to taste. No visitor has ever said anything about them not looking exactly right. In fact the only comment I’ve heard about it at all was from a visitor (not modeler) that was a little amazed that it was painted styrene.
This issue came up about 3 years ago when I was building the cornerstone coaling tower. I’ve got a number of concrete paints, from Pollyscale, Floquil, Testors, etc., and used them all alone or in combination.
The thing is, concrete is not a single color. Like dirt, rocks, grass, sky, and so on, the color can vary greatly. I find that there are two basic shades, however - grey and brown. Note that these are very faint shades of course. Some feel that concrete - ususally fresh - has a green tint, and I can’t argue with that.
What it comes down to is for you to experiment and perhaps mix your own. I ended up doing that, for I just wasn’t comfortable with what colors came out of the bottle. Soooo, play around with the colors and soon you will get to what works for you.
I ended up using a medium grey for sidewalks thing is sidewalks are dirty around here so I brushed a thin wash of diluted black over it and I leave whatever I splatter on it alone usually.
Jarrell, I agree with you that concrete is a hard color to model due to so many variables. I’ve found that Polyscale’s aged concrete color varies from one batch to another. The first bottle I bought was too orange. The next one was better. I’ve mixed some sand color to aged concrete, and weathering it seems to help, too. DJ.
Real concrete pad or right, styrene painted on left.
