SRMW Threadwell Textile on the S&S RR

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Rocks come in lots of different colors and I plan on using every one.

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Here is the wall after I add the colors to the individual stones.  I know it looks bad.

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I then paint the mortar lines with a small brush and neutral grey tint with lots of alcohol. Staying in the lines doesn't matter.

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Once the mortar lines are dry - it only takes a few minutes I start the fixing process. I know at this point it looks pretty bad. What I want to do is dull down the colors, mix them together, and then fix the color so it doesn't rub off when I handle the walls. As for the mortar lines - stone Masons was the mortar off  the face of the stones with water.
We will do it with a nice fluffy brush. As we are doing this, we will add some raw umber tint to help dull down the colors. Our brush will also take some of the color from the neighboring stones and deposit it on the face of each individual stone - blending the colors. Here are a few pictures showing the process.

First, here are the two blending colors. I will talk about the green later.

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Here is a picture of the brush I use and the mortar coming off the faces of the stones.

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Here is the blending process with the raw umber tint added to the brush. At this point I'm just blending the colors and giving the wall a dulled down appearance.  Once I have the walls completed and installed I will cover over everything with another blending process to make all the stonework look the same.

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Here is a picture of a wall just before it goes into the paint booth for the fixative.

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Here is the fixative that I'm using.  After this dries the wall can be handles without removing the color.

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A couple pictures of the walls after the fixative dries.

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As you can see, we loose some of the blending with the application of the fixative. Once everything is assembled in place I will apply the blending colors with the big fluffy brush again.  First, the raw umber tint and then the chrome oxide green to make the rocks look they have some mold on them.


Here is a picture where I experimented with the blending process over the fixative in the corner of the building.

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It looks like I have a couple air holes that I need to fix in this last photograph.  The camera always helps with our modeling.   The chalks give the stones a texture that to my eye looks very natural. You loose some of that affect when you apply the fixative, making the second blending process a real necessity.

[Janbouli]

Thanks John , great tutorial, never would have tried the brighter colors if I hadn't seen this.

[vinceg]

yeah, that's quite a remarkable transformation. Looks good.

[deemery]

Great looking stone, and I never thought about fixative as an intermediate step.


dave