Weathered Bethgon's-My First Airbrush Attempt


macjet

macjet

Member
Up for your consideration is my first airbrush weather attempt. These GRLX (fictional leasing company named after my son) cars were purchased from Detroit Edison and see service between the Powder River Basin and the San Antonio Power Plant. The Rock Island handles these cars from Wyoming south and then hands them off to the UP in Ft. Worth. (I think this story holds water, Eric can correct if I'm off.)

The cars were weathered with grimy black and mud. The trucks were weathered with mud mixed with black and rust. The wheels were done with blackened rust and then powders on top of the almost dry paint. The wheels were the easiest to do with my new wheel mask from Modelers Choice (Thanks Josh!).

Under artificial light the car weathering appears darker and the wheels don't look as orange.:confused:

Honest input. No "yes" men please.

Thanks.

Edit: Please ignore the giant finger of death in the first photo and overlook the fact that the rotary ends are back to back. It's so friggin windy here right now I was glad just to get the pics without my cars blowing away.
 
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Mac, those wheels so look way too orange. If they look better in artificial light, I guess that's OK but my first impulse would be to darken them down some. The general weathering looks good. Did you seal the decals and the car with dullcote before you weathered? From some reason, the decals are showing up as much darker then the rest of the car, almost like paint got under the decals.
 
Jim:

I've attached a picture under artificial light.

The car was sealed in clear flat before the weathering. The trim film that I used was a little darker then the car body.
 
I like the color of the wheels, they look more like "new" installs when they're that orange. They get blacker by age, due to grime & grease.

Those wheel masks work well I see? I have not ordered mine yet, had to do a RailFlyer order first.
 
jbaakko said:
Those wheel masks work well I see? I have not ordered mine yet, had to do a RailFlyer order first.
Click to expand...

It's the best $4 you can spend in this hobby. I couldn't imagine painting wheels without them. I wish I had ordered two sets of each size. But I'll manage painting 8 at a time.

Thanks again for the tool tip. Keep 'em coming.
 
The wheels do look better under artificial light. As Josh said, brand new wheels actually look the most "rusty" so a weathered car should have them a little more black. Not much you can do about the decals but, next time, trim the film closer and put the reporting marks and numbers on as separate pieces. Any changes due to the decal sheet film won't be as noticeable the less you have of it on the car.
 
Looks pretty good, as Josh noted the wheels just look "newer".
That finger of death does get around, and as for the rotary's being back to back... we used to send them out like that after rearranging the cars at the plant.
(I'm sure BN had fun getting them all facing the same way again!)
 
UP2CSX said:
The wheels do look better under artificial light. As Josh said, brand new wheels actually look the most "rusty" so a weathered car should have them a little more black. Not much you can do about the decals but, next time, trim the film closer and put the reporting marks and numbers on as separate pieces. Any changes due to the decal sheet film won't be as noticeable the less you have of it on the car.
Click to expand...

I'm going to do another batch of wheels tonight. I'm going to add more black and tone the orange down a little. I agree that they are too clean to match the car.

I had to cut a large piece of trim film to cover the DEEX marks as they were much smaller numbers and letters then I chose for GRLX. I never intended to hide the trim film. The idea was to have a noticeable patch job but one that actually went through a paint shop versus a field job.
 
Ah, I get it now, Mac. In that case, I would have actually made the area around the new reporting marks and numbers a little cleaner than the rest of the car with the idea the car was fairly recently painted before it was bought by the GRLX and was then patched in a paint shop so it looked neatly done but the whole car wasn't repainted. There would be no reason for the car to have any kind of patch job if the GRLX had repainted the whole car.
 
Here are updated photos. I reworked all the wheels and painted the trucks a little darker too. Same rust/black mix on the paint but I used a darker chalk mix this time.
 
Looks good, Mac. A minor detail but one to think about is also painting the back side of each wheel. You'd only see this from certain angles but you can see the shiny back side of two wheels in your last photo. I've found just painting them flat black to eliminate any glare is all that's needed.
 
Three foot rule! Three foot rule!:D

Yeah, I didn't even think about the inside of the wheel until I posted and looked at that last pic. I still need to pull the wheels and recheck the gauge so that would be a good time to hit them with some flat black.
 
Looks great to me





CV2.JPG
 
Mac, that's the trouble with the three foot rule when you are taking close up pics. The three foot rule only works if you take pictures from three feet away. :)
 
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