I’ve indicated my preference for casein colors (as opposed to acrylics) for weathering in several previous posts. But, for various uninteresting reasons, I had no examples to show. I finally removed all of those reasons and photographed the progression of the first car I’ve weathered with casein in a long time.
All of the following pictures are of the same car, CRR 48357, an Accurail “Wood Side Twin Hopper” and, except for the last two shots, all were taken from approximately the same angle and with the same lighting.
This car is a pretty fair approximation of the composite (wood and steel) cars built during WW II when hoppers were desperately needed but steel was in short supply. The kit was assembled per instructions with no modifications except to add Kadee #5 couplers, P2K all metal wheels on the inner axles, and Intermountain wheels with 10K resistors (for a planned detection system) on the outer axles. All wheels and axles were painted with Floquil Grimy Black before I started weathering the car. And that brings us to the first view; the unweathered car:
Accurail does a pretty decent job of showing wood grain on these cars but I wanted something a little more worn so I “distressed” the wood boards (tried not to touch the steel bracing) with a small wire brush. This also wore away some of the lettering as shown in the second view:
The third view shows the car after the first application of Shiva casein color. This was a very thin wash of dark gray applied to the entire car to ‘fade’ the paint. The trick here is to NOT mix the black (80%) and white (20%) very thoroughly because paint doesn’t really fade evenly. (I’m afraid I didn’t do a real good job of that.) Notice in this view how the wash also partially covers the white lettering but still allows it to be read (OK, the 7 is pretty much obliterated but that
Casein is a milk product–it is used to create paints that are water-soluble when wet but stop being water-soluble when dry, kind of like acrylics, but with the differences mentioned above (more translucency, longer drying time. I have an article from an old MR (November 1960) on weathering with casein.
Finding casein colors is the worst part. When I first used them about 35 years ago, they were found in any reasonably good art supply store. But since acrylics have become available… [:(]
I finally found Shiva casein colors at Mister Art (http://www.misterart.com/) thanks to a query on this forum. They’re currently getting $4.46 to $7.46 (depending on the color) for a 1.25 oz tube. The good news is that most of the colors needed for weathering are the less expensive colors and 1.25 oz of each of those colors is probably more than most of us will ever use.
Your best bet would be any local art supply store–you might try University Art on J Street (there is another place a block away that you might try, they carry more obscure stuff but I forget the name) or you might try the CSUS Hornet Bookstore in the art-supplies section.
WOW!! What a difference a good photo editor can make. I was really unhappy with the pictures of the final results but couldn’t seem to do better with the camera and lighting that I was using.
Then, for unrelated reasons, I installed new drivers and other new software for my HP Officejet K80xi printer/scanner/copier. Included with that software is a photo editor that, in my brief experience with such things, is terrific. Others may think it’s crude but I like it. Look at the difference below that just a little lightening made in the sixth and seventh views posted earlier.
Now, THAT’s more what I had in mind in the first place.
