How to Weather Model Trains with Watercolors

Obvious often mistake, watercolor and acrylic paints both are water soluble and the confusion is understandable. Acrylic paints such as these craft bottles that I like to use are permanent paints. Once dry they are on for good. Watercolor paints on the other hand, never completely dry. They are always able to be re-softened and removed or reworked with water.

They can in some cases, be washed off completely by water faucet they can, some cases be removed partially, colors can be mixed and blended without the colors underneath. Okay. A nice thing to remember about all water-soluble paints and water-soluble materials is that they are non-toxic. They may not taste good, and you may feel a little sick but they will never hurt you seriously. Inexpensive children's paint sets work almost as well as the watercolor tube sets.

The colors are a little more basic and little more difficult to use but they are readily available everywhere. The colors are the same. Watercolor paints from my experience appear to be permanent. There are paintings that have existed for centuries with little ill effect and model railroads are rarely exposed to continuous bright sunlight. I have never had a model deteriorate to the point that I found it necessary to repaint.

I believe over time however that watercolors cure much like concrete the color seems to become more subtle and varied over the first few months after the model is complete. Here's a great way to add a mildewed effect to a wooden wall. A wood material is a little harder to paint than a styrene material because it's porous. So you have to be sure to keep the materials wet and you have to be sure to do most of what you want before it dries, but I will start by just brushing some clean water onto the wall. No, no real need to be neat.

One of the nice things about watercolor is that the paint always dries with a more subtle effect than it appears when wet, now mold is green so I'll just work a little bit of green into the wall. Just some streaks here and there if I have a little too much this is kind of intense right now. I'll just brush over more, a little bit of green it'll just kind of give it that mildewy feeling. Little bit doesn't take much to bring out some texture I'll add a little brown. Always if you think about it, water washes down in real life so you kind of would make the bottom darker than the top.

The black is on a little too heavily so I will start to just blend it all in. And when you blend it all in you start getting a different color. Nice thing to do if you get a little too much on, like I did right there you could just wipe it off while it's wet and you're pretty much back where you started. We can start again and I found I had the black a little too strong so I'll add a little more green again, by the way anytime you wipe a coat off you're always leaving a little bit of it left and you're adding a little more subtlety to the weathering, I'll add a little bit of black to it and we're starting to get that mildewed effect. You might want to run some streaks vertically too.

As long as it's wet, it gives a nice spread and a nice flow. I can take a little of the black and a little bit of the water and just kind of keep dirtying it just a little discoloring on the wall. The wall looks pretty grungy down the bottom now. Maybe we'll leave the top pretty clean for now but I'll take a little bit of brown paint and a little bit of water. Just add a little bit more.

Just keep adding a little more color. then if you have a little too much you wipe a little bit off. You let this dry and I'll just darken the bottom a little bit. And I think that'll look pretty good. Just a little bit discoloring, little bit of dry, little bit of rotten mildew on the wall, which happens when it doesn't get enough moisture and enough light.

I'll just add a little mildew, more mildew down the bottom. A little bit of green mildew I'll had a little bit of red to grey it out add a little too much. Nice thing is if you think you're messing it up, you just keep working on it till it gets where you want This I think looks pretty good now. So here we have the first steps in weathering a wall with a little mildew and a little watercolor. Once this piece is dried you can see the paint looks a lot better than it did while wet.

So don't be concerned if things don't look just the way you want but let them dry and see what you like later on. Sometimes looking at them the next day is a good solution. If you don't like it, you can always wash off the paint. I would like to add some rust color to this concrete wall but I don't really have a color I like. So I'm going to try to mix one.

Now we think of rust as being red. So red's a good place to start. We'll start with a little red. The reality of rust is it's often orange, little bit of yellow and we have an orangy color. Rust like many other things has many variations of color, if you get a little too much red, you mix a little more.

That's not a bad color but I think I'd like to add a little brown to it. Now if we get something we like, you just kind of mess the colors up till you get them where you want them. That I think will be a decent rust color. Now, a good way to add this on the wall would be to take a clean brush. And first we will just wet the wall we won't rush to streak and wash.

So rather than actually painting the rust on we will take a brush and load it up with a lot of water and we will just kind of put some drips. Gravity gives its effect and helps the rust come down. If you have a little too much paint like I do there you just keep adding the water and allow it to rust. If rust is not always the same color. So I might take a little brown and I might go over it somewhat, a little brown.

Rust isn't always brown it might be a little red so I could add a little red and I could even add a little bit of yellow and I've done a little rusty wall. You'll notice the paint puddles down the bottom. Best thing to do is just take a brush and wipe it off. When you are happy with the streaking effect be smart and leave it alone, lay it flat and let it dry. Since watercolors are a transparent medium we can use them to influence colors without changing the color.

Surprisingly, one way to influence a color is with the same color. If I take a little bit of green and mix a little different green and put it over the green wall, wooden door I have here, it will change the green slightly. That is not often thought of and artists often create graze by mixing complimentary colors, complimentary colors are colors that are opposite of each other on the color wheel. To put it very simply, a good way to remember this is red and green are Christmas colors, they're complimentary. Purple and yellow are Easter colors, they're complimentary.

That leaves blue and orange which are also complimentary. In this case the compliment is red and if I add a little bit of red to this green little thin wash of red to this green door and do it just right, I will not end up with a red door but I will end up with a green that's a little bit duller than I started. When it dries it comes out a little bit better and when, if I have a little too much, I can wipe it off. I can add some of the red to the other one too and basically we end up with a little different color green than we started, but it's still a green, a little duller a little less intense than we started. One of the beauties of watercolor is that we can take a wet towel and wipe off all or most of it with very little effort, some colors stain, some colors will never completely come off but I've already pretty much started with a brand new piece.

In this place, and this paint has been dry for at least three or four days now. I've gotten it almost to new color but I can take this again and take various colors and paint them on. One of the beauties of watercolor on a styrene surface is that it doesn't really adhere to the painted surface so it will resist and settle into the cracks. By putting some black onto to this dark brown wall, I am not gonna really paint the wall but when this dries the black will just discolor the recesses and I can paint pretty much to my heart's content until I'm happy with it. I'll wipe a little bit off again.

You can, you can paint as much as you like because while it is what you can always remove any paint you dislike, and you can always remove enough of it where you can go from there. I often weather watercolor models by putting on way too much and then removing what I feel like. A good way to remove it is with a stiff brush or a wet paper towel or any convenient tool at hand.