DURANGO & RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RAILROAD - AUSTRALIA SLIMTRACKS NARROW GAUGE WORKSHOPS PRESENTS “HOW TO STAIN & COLOUR ROCK FACES” And a little bit on carving the rocks. By Laurie McLean Photos by the author So we’ve gone and stuck the plaster, To the framework in our room, Even got it onto other things, That’s calling for a broom, It’s to be our mighty mountains, Where the trains are to be run, Winding past the sheer rock faces, Oh, this journey’s just such fun! Got the artist paints out ready, And the brushes are all clean, Let’s get the palette coloured, Staining rocks is what I mean, The plaster’s white not dirty, We’ll change this right a way, And make the scene just lovely, But it may take us all day! “Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.” I was asked to do this article by a friend on the Hon3 site Following on from the “hints & tips” on painting retaining walls & bridge abutments in my previous article, we will look at the bigger part of our scenery – the rocks, cliffs & talus slides. Whether you make plaster rock faces from moulds, or you hand carve, or both, they will need to be coloured & blended into the scenery. I mentioned before about colours on our layouts & the room lighting – you really must do a good job on lighting if the whole layout is going to be the dream you want it to be. The sun does not shine in layout rooms (unless it’s a Garden RR) – so there needs to be a lot of light colours used to compensate for lack of natural light. The other important matter regarding the use of colours is to always add white to the colour /colours being mixed together. Ah, white, my favorite model colour! OK, let’s start by saying we never use acrylic colours straight out of the tubes – they are too bold & are not realistic for any scenery purpose. The natural rock faces have weathered over time & seepage from water has brought minerals out that have stained many of the rocks & the good old sun has bleached them also. We have lots of subtle variations to copy onto our plaster rocks. I won’t get into the scenery techniques for doing the flats on top of hills – maybe another time. 1 DURANGO & RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RAILROAD - AUSTRALIA WHERE DO WE START ? Presuming that the hills, mountains & valleys have been coated with plaster over a “whatever” frame, we now have this plaster base to work on. Let’s call it a “shell”. Latex moulds filled with plaster can be placed onto this shell with a good spray of water to dampen the shell first. Another method is to “trowel-on” fresh plaster onto the shell at the vertical face areas – again pre-wetting. Whichever method you choose, we are going to need to colour these rock faces & blend them into our other scenery so it matches. I don’t use water based paints from tins & a 2 inch paint brush to coat everything – this is a cost I can save on. It may be a technique used by others but I like taking my time & learning things along the way. I always learn a “little something else” doing scenery – it just seems to come up & when it does I learn by it. Skills & ability in modeling are gained from friends passing on information but mostly from actually doing it yourself – yes that’s right, – by doing & trying it by you! Top photo: Rocks & cutting. Middle photo: The “washes” on the rocks in the corner. Bottom photo: The scenery shell & where the next stage is to be added on. The gray paint is where I used up the remaining paint & wiped it from the paint brush – plaster rocks will cover this shortly. We will show steps in the process of placing “washes” of “stains” onto areas of the plaster & how they end up. A step-by-step with photos is best, reading too much stuff gets confusing & I don’t like making my computer keyboard smoke! I have made some latex moulds for doing some of my rock faces but I still like to “work” the cracks & expansion fractures in the cliffs by hand. Here again I vary what I do. I use an Exacto blade to carve into the still damp plaster, a wire brush sometimes & a wood chisel to take some larger chunks away. I endeavour to get “texture” where deep cracks are shaded from the sun & splintery rock fissures that will soak up dark washes of paints to high-light the cracks. On the surface go the light colours & white bleached areas. The trick is to get it all blended together & make it look real. 2 DURANGO & RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RAILROAD - AUSTRALIA STEP BY STEP Here we go then. The plaster is still damp on the example rock mould & we are going to carve the sedimentary lines into the rock face. Why do this you ask? – Well, in a model we need to make things a bit dramatic to show off the miniature world we are creating & by making these sediment lines they also assist us in placing the washes of different colours. You know of “painting by numbers” where a certain colour is placed into a certain numbered area, well this is similar. Instead of numbers we have small rock areas with cracks across them vertically, horizontally & diagonally in all sorts of random angles. The cracks vary but the contour can be easily determined. FIG.1 In the photo FIG.1 you can see what I mean about “painting by numbers” or “painting in the boxes”, it makes the “Where do I put the paint wash”? an easy process to follow. Notice how nothing is exactly the same shape – it’s the way to carve the plaster. So, the very first step to getting the rock face to look realistic is the moment you start to carve the sedimentary layers into the rock faces. Get this right & its all down hill from here mate! We stain area ‘A’ with light raw umber – with some white added of course, & we stain area ‘B’ with some raw sienna & burnt umber. Now ALL of these paints are heavily diluted with water – 90% water & 10 % paint is max – better to go 95 % water & 5% paint & don’t forget – the paint is 2 colours plus white. WHAT IS THE TRICK MIXING THE COLOURS ? The “trick” to getting subtle colour variations & not have concentrations of exactly the same colour is to do a bit at a time. What do you mean “bit at a time” I hear you say? Well, in the “boxes” if we were to place the paint brush at the top of say, the big ‘A’ area, we know the “wash” of watery paint will run down the plaster face & it could run or dribble onto the lower box – we don’t want that to happen. By controlling the amount of paint the brush holds when dipped into the light paint stain is what we need to reduce so that the bristles just hold a small amount of wash. Placing this onto the ‘A’ at the top & running it just under the fault line you will see the transfer of the colour onto the plaster & it will “soak” in & spread a fair bit too. But, it DID NOT cover the whole box. We just placed some into the box to cover about 1/3 of the box area. We leave this box & now go onto the next ‘A’ box. Here we place a small amount of the same wash down the right hand crack line & it spreads inside the box lines. Now do the next box & so on, working in an area of about 1 foot square. Look at how much paint I have in the palette – just enough to do the job at hand. DO NOT race through this or try & do the whole room in one go, rather learn the techniques. The stain / wash needs to dry completely – when its wet it looks darker because of the moisture, once the moisture has evaporated the true colour of the wash will be seen. I do the washes on the plaster & come back the next night to touch-up – you must be patient here. 3 DURANGO & RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RAILROAD - AUSTRALIA Now we have layers ‘A’ & ‘B’ we can add ‘C’ or even ‘D’. No, this isn’t going to be psychedelic wall, if we add more colours they will be slightly more subtle – a tone between the 2 original colours we started with but maybe we will add some yellow oxide into the mix to give it that little extra. Or choose another earthy colour that suits your area being modeled – maybe use some brown or good old black & white to give grays – but heavily diluted if using black at anytime. Here are the steps in photos – The first photo FIG.2 shows the plaster just out of the mould & it’s still wet. This is the moment we need to get to work as it is the FIRST STEP & it is the most important step if we are to get this right. “Hang on” I hear you say, “we are suppose to be painting not carving rocks” Well, yes you are right, but, a good artist prepares his canvas does he not? This “preparation” is the “tip” that so many miss & it is the major cause of why the rocks don’t look like rocks when the paints on & finished on some layouts. But this is not going to happen on ours is it? No, we are going to get this first step of preparation right. We might experiment doing some carving, but we won’t over do it either, this would be unrealistic! FIG.2 FI G.3 I left the “m’ out of “determine” in FIG.3, silly me! You can see the horizontal lines being carved. FIG.4 FIG.5 Fig.4 above shows the next lot of lines to carve & my Exacto knife I use. 4 DURANGO & RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RAILROAD - AUSTRALIA FIG.5 Ah Ha – here we go, now we can start to place the “washes” onto the plaster. Notice the small brush I use – it’s a #2 size. You can see the “box” where we are starting from & how the paint flows. FIG.6 Now we are blending & using all our 4 colours from the palette – we “overlap” the washes so the colours mix together a little & blend in. Also, see how the dominant colour is running across the rocks – it’s our strata line. In this case the wash colour is raw umber – the light brown & burnt umber is the darker wash. I did a little thin run of raw sienna the yellow colour to create the oxide seeping from within the rock. Still “painting by boxes” ……….. FIG.7 Here we continue painting across. We need to dip our small brush into the different pots from time to time to make the blending mix of colours. The cracks are really showing even at this early stage & the “depth” is already starting to let us know that it is a rugged piece of cliff face. The yellow on the top of rocks that stick out will capture the room lights – we will put a little “White wash” over this to bleach the colour. Now, you must admit this is not hard to follow – is it? I may have got “chucked-out” from kindergarten for cheating in finger painting, but this is pretty simple work. Just look at the plaster already – tell me even though it is still we that it doesn’t look good! Mate…. You’re going to be a flamin’ “Leonardo De Vinegar” & your art work will be hanging in the Loo. Tell me this isn’t fun, tell me your not enjoying painting your rocks? 5 DURANGO & RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RAILROAD - AUSTRALIA Don’t rush of now to the art supply shop, sit back & finish reading – we’re not done just yet! FIG.8 FIG.9 Now the boxes are full Here are our washes we used It is easy once the techniques are learnt. Our little rock face has been painted & I added some tufts of grass just to make this photo come alive some more. The broken bits of plaster & chips can be used for talus rocks that slide down the mountain sides. A quick way to colour these is to make thin washes of the same paints in spray bottles & spray the plaster chips on a tray & leave out in the sun to dry. Use different colours of course in the sprayer bottle. I use ice-cream plastic tubs to store the plaster chips & I do mix in real earth & small real rocks too. Well my friends that’s it on this subject. I sure hope you picked this up & give it a go on your layouts. Your friend down-under, Laurie 6