I added “real” soil to my scenery and secured it with alcohol and white glue/water. The soil turned a bit darker than I would like and it also left some dry puddle discoloration from the water/glue mixture. I would like to lighten the soil and highlight it with some of the A.I.M. chalk powders I use to weather my train fleet. What would you use to adhere the powders to the already “glued” down soil? Or is there a better way?
Here’s a pic…
Frank, your dirt colour looks just fine to me. Are you planning to leave it as-is? I’d add some ground foam in at least a couple shades of green, and perhaps a slight touch of yellow, too. Finely ground foam simulates recent growth quite nicely, and should be applied first, then you can add a coarser grade to represent larger plants and weeds. Apply all of the various colours and types of foam before any wetting agent or glue/water mix, and “green-up” the entire area in one sitting. You could also add some electrostatic grass for a slightly different look - I’d add it after the fine foam, but before the coarser varieties.
Wayne
I guess I should have mentioned that this “dirt” patch is actually a parking lot/roadway for my MOW vehicles in the yard, so there will be dust and grime,and possibly vehicle oil spills too, so thats why I’d like to color it various shades where the vehicles travel.
Unless the operations is a really “backwoods” type, I’d add some gravel to most of the yard, along with some greenery, especially around the edges, and around any structures. I have a gravel driveway, but it needs to be sprayed regularly to prevent weeds and other plants from taking over. A dirt parking lot would be a quagmire in even a moderate rainstorm - not likely to occur on your layout, I know. [swg]
Wayne
Frank, I would try brushing on some tinted Plaster of Paris and then spritzing it with a water and alcohol solution. It would make the gravel less gritty and a bit more dusty and fine like many parking lots would be. I am thinking this way based on my experience weathering the ballast between the rails as Joe Fugate recommends.
As he described in other places, I mixed two colours of tempera powder and the PoP, and then used a large artist’s brush to scoop up lots at a time and wipe it thickly over the area to be weathered. Then, a misting and wait until it dries. In your case, if you don’t have any powders that you can use, maybe you can get some masonary dye from a builders’ supply store. I would go with a “mesa” or very light tan and mix a small portion with the PoP just to make it look like dust and not too dark or white.
-Crandell
So you don’t recommend using A.I.M. or Bragdon powders to achieve that look? I’m just wondering if I can stay away from PoP mainly because the powedered tempra paints available here are just not quite the right color. The browns tend to look a bit purple after wetting.
I’ve used chalks to weather my track/ballast without gluing them. AIM and other powders are self sticking, so they should work even better.
There’s always the airbrush too.
This may sound goofy, but if you have a fireplace (and have yet to clean it out for the summer!) try taking some ash, sift out all the chunks, and use the pure dusty ash and lightly brush it into your ground using an old mascara brush or other soft brush. It tends to be a grayish tinge. the only objectionable aspect to using ash is the odor which eventually goes away, but you can’t beat the price. Don’t be tempted to use the gray ash from your charcoal grill because it has food grease mixed in.
Frankly I would not obsess about getting the shades perfectly uniform, and maybe leaving it as is is the best option.
Dave Nelson
Gad! but it’s been awhile since I last brought this up.
I was once acquainted with a guy who weathered using cigarette ashes. He was a non-smoker and the smell of (tobacco) smoke made him nauseous and so he always did this out-of-doors but he would burn down a whole pack of cigarettes at a time, filter it, and then use it for weathering his rolling stock. It got’r done. Since it tended to do an outstanding job of suppressing the sheen off of paint I suppose that it might make a pretty good agent for representing dust.
There is, of course, the matter of expense; governmental tax policy has driven the price of tobacco products through the ceiling. When I first encountered this process back in the '70s cigarettes in the overseas commissaries were running less than fifty cents a pack; this process would still be rather inexpensive for weathering rolling stock but may be just a little on the expensive side for any kind of area coverage assuming, of course, that some other (cheaper) method can be found.
When I was a teen my parents smoked and my mother’s favorite cigarette was Lark. Lark had a charcoal filter, so after she was done with a cigarette I would take the remaining butt, slice it with an Xacto blade, and remove the little grains of charcoal which were perfect for HO coal …
Dave Nelson
Frank, I don’t have any experience with the weathering powders. I was thinking more in terms of building up the surface with some very fine “fill” that was hopefully tinted as you would like it, and at the same time it would add some smoothness to the gravel look you have to make it look as if there was some fine material involved. I used a simple brown masonary dye for my first several batches of ground goop three years ago and ended up thinking it was too brown as it dried. Later, I realized that it was darned near perfect. I also blended one part “mesa” with two parts of the “brown” and got a good realistic result.
I would also experiment with tempera powders if you wanted to go the PoP route at all. If you are inclined to leave the surface with the texture you have derived, but just to lighten it, or alter it with shading effects here and there, I would think the right Bragdon powder might do a good job. Then again, perhaps a light dusting of just plain PoP might lighten it if that is an effect you desire. To be honest, I have even resorted to adding a few drops of acrylic paint to a batch of watery PoP to tint it and then painted it on whatever I was wanting to coat. It worked fine as long as I didn’t make it more than a tenth of a mm thick. The problem with working with already slurried PoP is that it will want to freeze in place and about as thick as you place it as soon as it comes into contact with anything absorbant, particularly material that has the same materials in it as the PoP. Any spackle, structolite, drywall mud…all those things will want to grab and hold wet plaster unless you almost soak it first.
For the look you want, a more dusty look, I would dust with a powder and spritz afterward.
-Crandell
If you have a pellet stove (or know someone that does) you can get some really fine gray ash there.