Painting the rocks really brings the layout to life. I'm going to follow Dave Meeks "Three Tones of the Same Hue" painting technique.
Here's what it looks like now:
10/29/24: To start, I put on a base or primer coat of a light gray that I had on hand from a household project.
I needed to get this done so I could glue down ties and lay the track through the tunnel; then I can glue on the top of the mountain, putty the last crack between foam layers, build the other bridge abutments and trestle footings and the tunnel portals; after all that, I can do the finish painting. After painting is complete I'll install the bridges.
Here are the colors I'm using. The marked shades will go on the rocks. I may use the darkest shade, at the bottom, for the fascia.
11/24/24: The middle color, Sharkskin, is indistinguishable from the leftover paint I used for the base coat. I painted over the rest of the spackle and some bare foam. Tomorrow I'll add a black wash.
11/27/24: I added some of the other colors. I'm not sure there's enough contrast between colors. I'll let it dry and tomorrow add another dark wash and do some highlighting. I plan to get a small jar of the darkest shade from the color card and use that for the fascia, so I could maybe apply some of that to the rocks as well. I might also use some of the reddish brown colors from my Christmas layout to add some warmer highlights.
12/1/24: I added a few more washes of dilute black, and it's finally dark enough and gray enough that I think it will work. Problem now is that the paint I used was satin, not flat, and it has a sheen to it, even after applying the black wash -- it's pretty apparent in the picture above. I picked up some matte medium and I'm going to apply a wash of that in hopes of killing the sheen.
12/13/2024: I did a wash of dilute matte medium, which helped with the sheen. I'm going to do another wash in some areas. I also added some dirt in some places. The rubble in the canyon bottom is sand and small pebbles from Lockwood Creek.
12/15/24: I should probably start a new entry for vegetation, but for now, here's a picture with some greenery added in the lower part of the canyon. It's easier to add this stuff now, before the bridge is fixed in place. So far there are some dry reeds made from bristles from a cheap paintbrush, a few bits of lichen, some Woodland Scenics Clump Foliage, and one small Woodland Scenics tree, which in this scale is more like a large shrub, or maybe a scrub oak.
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