Woodgrain Painting

[leitch]

Morning having received the Wingnut Wings Felixstowe (Late) I am thinking about the woodgrain.

I have looked at the Wingnut Wings Tips, and found it to be a little abbrivated.

There are other sites I have found and there seems to be an awful lot of ways to do it.

 

Now as I see it:

1. Paint base colour (light tan of some sort) Most use Tamiya Deck tan or Radome Tan. What do you prefer?

2. Do I need a gloss coat here?

3. Oil paint (colour depends on whether light or dark wood). What colours do you use?

4. Tamiya Clear Orange over coat. Now some mix 50/50 Clear Orange and Clear Yellow. What do you do?

 

I have looked in the Tips section, but could not find anything, that maybe be my error as it is early(not enough coffee yet).

 

I thank you in advance for taking your time to help me out.

 

Andrew

[seiran01]

There are a number of ways to do wood grain and some will work better for you than others. It's actually the reason I delayed doing WWI models for so long but once I tried it, I didn't look back.

 

Different techniques, cliff notes edition:

Decals: several companies make wood grain decals (Uschi and HGW are the first that come to mind), these are good for wood panels but a lot of hassle for ribs etc. the decals are printedon clear, so you would paint a buff color, and vary up the colors of you want to show different things. This way is also good if you like to preshade panels.

 

For these approaches below, you generally want to spray a clear coat over the finish (usually thinned-down clear red, orange, or clear yellow) to both protect the finish and give it a realistic glazed look.

 

Colored pencils: some folks use coloured pencils to simulate the wood grain effect over a tan-painted surface. Until recently, I'd only ever seen this done for propellers, with very nice effect. I haven't tried this approach myself but if you look at the Wingnut Wings Fans group on facebook, there's a guy building an Albatros who used penciled for wood grain on all the external panels and it looks absolutely amazing.

 

Oil paints:

Oils are disturbingly easy once you try them, you just thin the oil down and drag a small (!) amount on the panels you want to simulate into you get the desired effect. With oils, they take a long time to dry thoroughly (several days) unless you use an accelerator like lighter fluid. A tiny bit on the brush will go a long way. I use Tamiya Buff as a base with burnt sienna oil paint as the grain and then seal in clear orange, for a medium-colored finish. I haven't yet found a good technique for very light wood finishes. For mahogany and other dark woods, I use Tamiya red brown as the base and paint raw umber oil over it, and seal with clear yellow. Check out the fokker d.vii build in my signature if you want to see the medium grain finish, I used it on the propellor. If you link to my WNW group build below, I used the dark wood finish on the gotha cockpit floor.

 

Paint masks

I discovered the Radu Brinzan photo etch wood grain masks recently and I absolutely love them. You can't paint thin areas easily this way due to the size but it gives the easiest and best grain finish in my opinion.bibused the mask on the control panel coaming on my Gotha if you look at the final cockpit pix I uploaded last night in my WNW group build thread linked below. For this, I painted a base of Tamiya red brown, and then airbrushed Tamiya brown darkened with a bit of black through the mask. The photo shows the raw result before spraying clear yellow over it. With this approach you need to make sure that the mask sits against the panels you paint for a sharp finish.

 

I hope this all makes sense, you may be wise to try some of these out on scrap plastic until you get the desired results. They are really all quite easy once you give them a shot!

Happy modelling

Mike

[seiran01]

Forgot to mention- You do not need a gloss coat before applying wood grains with oils but definitely make sure to apply one afterwards even if it's just clear gloss

[Hagar]

I paint the base coat using Tamiya Dark yellow usually. Sometimes I'll use flesh. Big thing is experiment a bit with colours.

Then I paint on an oil paint. Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber are my favorites. I then drag a clean brush along in the direction of wood grain. I also use the foam from AM products to drag along as it leaves some very nice grain marks. Then I add dabs of Yellow ochre or brown or some other contrasting oil paint and drag that along. It adds depth to the wood and gives you different shades.

When all dry I spray on either Tamiya clear yellow or orange or a mixture depending on what I want to achieve.

Some hints. Put the oil paints on some card stock, I use the presentation cards or recipe cards. This will wick out some of the lindseed oil and usually my paint will dry over night.

 

Here is the Hannover CL.II I am working on and having used these techniques.

 

 

 

 

 

Hope that helps some.

James

[leitch]

Thank you you all, I will be trying all these tips out over the next couple of weekends, hope to show some pics then.

 

Andrew

[Out2gtcha]

My personal tip:

Go to a place like Hobby Lobby and get yourself some Japan Dryer. I used to add it to my thinned mix of oil, but these days I have just been thinning the oil with the Japan Dryer itself. Its worked out really great.........it takes the drying time of the oil from a few days to a few hours.

[Dragon]

I've recently purchased a couple of WNW kits, and these tips will come in handy.

 

Thanks for sharing!

 

Mike

[Verbeek]

Take a look here, a lot of fine stuff for WnW and other kits.

 

 

http://www.uschivdr.com/shopping-categories/shop-chemicals/

[Vandy 1 VX 4]

There are a number of ways to do wood grain and some will work better for you than others.

 

 

Oil paints:

 With oils, they take a long time to dry thoroughly (several days) unless you use an accelerator like lighter fluid. A tiny bit on the brush will go a long way

Mike  What Lighter Fluid Fuel are you using? Ronsonol lighter fluid or Zippo?  Does it contain Naptha?   I have used Naptha from the paint / hardware store in the past. to thin paint and for my Zippo!!! 

 

Also thank you for that great tutorial

Cheers

[Verbeek]

What if your Japan isn't wet?

Then you take a look at my link above.

[Vandy 1 VX 4]

What if your Japan isn't wet?

 

Then you use Kentucky Jelly            Wrong forum      My wife is Japanese and she is going to kill me :rofl:

[seiran01]

Mike What Lighter Fluid Fuel are you using? Ronsonol lighter fluid or Zippo? Does it contain Naptha? I have used Naptha from the paint / hardware store in the past. to thin paint and for my Zippo!!!

 

Also thank you for that great tutorial

Cheers

I've not used lighter fluid myself so I can't really comment in it, I've just heard of a few guys using it locally. If I can find out what kind, I'll be happy to share!

[Zero77]

Personnaly, i prefer to use artist acrylics (Liquitex basics, easy to find in art shop or even on amazon) rather than oils, because they dry WAAAAAAAY faster. Actually, they dry in a few minutes. The downside is that you have to work faster, but that's not that difficult.

I firstly paint my parts in shades of sandy brown, or any other wood alike color depending of what you want to get, and then i simply use some foam bits and make strokes of artists acrylics over it. Then you just level it with a flat brush to make it smoother, no thinner is needed. It is possible to add a few wood stains with a fine brush, and then leveling it as well to blur it in the whole wood grain effect. If you are not satisfied you can clean it with a wet kitchen towel or earbud.

When there is several panels, you just have to mask each panel to have different colors and grain from one to another. It is possible to let them without any varnish for a pretty natural look, or add a gloss coat over it for a varnished look. A bit of orange or yellow clear paint in the gloss coat can give a tinted varnish effect (very nice for the interiors).

 

Here are a few pictures of what you get with this method (here without any varnish) :

 

Here with a thin coat of future :

 

 

 

This whole fuselage has been made in about one afternoon (about 4 to 5h, i guess), and the very good thing is that you can continue to work on it without any break as it is almost instantly dry.

However, unfortunately, i've then f**cked it up with a further sponge camo, and i had to stip it all. I must do it again for many months, but at the moment, i've lost my mojo !

Edited February 21, 2015 by Zero77

[Verbeek]

Looks ......... Great, Zero.

[Dave J]

Heres a how to I did a while back...

 

http://forum.largescalemodeller.com/topic/20-wood-grain-a-how-too/