I’ve been working on my gantry. It’s a bit desultory as this is my only 3 days holiday in the UK this year. I’m trying to have a rest and sort some house bits too. I did get a chance to tidy up a corner of my garage and set up my airbrush.
I sprayed the gantry Vallejo ice yellow:
I then used sculptamold with a few drops of india ink to hide the white colour:
I have had this bag of slate ballast for years waiting for the right project.
I tamped the slate down into the sculptamold:
The Vallejo paint went on mottled. I always add a drop of window cleaner to the mix and this time I’ve been using a different cleaner with ammonia. It doesn’t work so well. I may have overthinned the mix a bit but not much more than usual. The gantry was quite subtle and actually I quite like because the paint is supposed to aged.
The antenna was really bad but it will add to the mix when weathered.
I put some dabs of oil paint on with a brush:
But they looked a bit naff so I got out my secret weapon:
It looks a bit splodgy (technical word!) but it’s only phase 1.
I used artists’ turps to wash the oils down leaving some streaks and create a generally rusty wash to weather it all down. On the left is the unwashed leg and on the right, the washed one:
I do like oils for this effect. I think they are the best method I’ve found yet:
This is a bit over rusty so I’ll tone it down a bit when it’s dry. That’s the beauty of oils – they don’t set up enough that you can’t rework them.
