First, I airsprayed the whole boxcar using ModelMaster flat clear acrylic paint. After the clear coat dried I traced some lines, with a white sharpened artist's crayon , over the bottom of the letters ( not below the letters ) , then with a very soft paint brush I "spreaded" the dust with a downward motion. I then sealed it by airspraying a light coat of flat clear acrylic Here is the picture of the weathered boxcar next to its unweathered brother. Jacques
Thanks for sharing Jacques, I had never seen this method of weathering the writing on the cars but looks like it's worth a try.:thumbs_up:
Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm glad it worked because I was afraid that airspraying the clear coat would blow the white dust of crayon away, but it didn't. For the same reason, now I feel more confident that I can use pastels to complete the weathering. Jacques
I have seen this fading on pictures, but did not understand how it happens. Do they use a water-soluble paint for lettering??
A unique method. The results look good. But, would it not be a whole lot easier with some dust colored chalk?
Christoph, if I had to repeat the experiment using paint, I'd rather use some white oil paints because it takes a long time to dry. I would proceed as follow: 1) Instead of using the white crayon, I would draw some very fine line over the bottom of the letter with white oil paint. 2) Before the oil paint dry ( you can even wait a couple of hours ) dip a wide paint brush in oil paint thinner and strike along the letters in a downward motion. That technique of "stretching" the oil paint with thinner damped paint brush is used for rust weathering. christoph, as you suggested I might give a try at using white oil paint for fading letters. As a matter of fact I might have mistitled that thread because letter fading is more like drybrushing the basic boxcar color on top of the entire letters. Jacques
That's exactly the 1st reaction I had when I saw an article ( sorry I can,t remember where ) on that topic. My own explaination is that artist's crayon are harder than pastel chalks ( as a matter of fact artist's crayons are labeled with the same hardness symbols as regular graphite pencils , HB for example is what I use ) so one can draw ,with a fine tip , directly on the boxcar letters. Of course one might ask: Why not then use a regular HB white coloured pencil ? because ( and it's another one of my own explaination :tb-smile: ) the "lead" of an artist's crayon is not made out of the same material as a regular graphite pencil. Wikipedia has a very interesting article about why a French chemist invented the artist's crayon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conté Jacques
Jacques, actually I was wondering about what happened to the original paint on real freight cars, not on the models :tb-ooh: I have never used oil paints (though I might have some hidden somewhere, once had a full set), so I don't know whether it is a good idea (maybe it is, maybe not). If you could share your experience, this would be great. Another question would be how to do this on decals, because I can hardly imagine to used crayons on a decal surface. Thinking about it, watercolors could be a solution. Have to try this :tb-biggrin:
