Stunning work, looks absolutely real Gary!
Have you ever posted your technique for applying woodgrain, would like to see how you make it look so real.
Thanks Grant, I did post a couple of photos of this earlier, but will clarify my method here with a few steps I take.
1. Airbrush on a coat of light tan, for example Tamiya Buff XF-57
2. Gloss coat this with a coat of X-22
3. When the gloss is quite dry, mix up various measures of oil paint colours (and I try to use Winsor & Newton series 1). I place a dollop of each colour on a sheet of plastic, and mix them with mineral spirit in a spot in the middle.I think it's best to use older tubes of paint that have lost a lot of their linseed oil, or put the oil paint on a piece of cardboard first to "wick off" some of the oil since it will take longer to dry with the oil present. The oil paint colours I used on this build were Ochre, Burnt Sienna, and Raw Umber. The burnt sienna will give a very reddish look to the mix, so I add less of that.
When I'm satisfied with the colour, I add enough mineral spirit to make a mixture to smear into place on the model's glossy tan surface as in that photo at the bottom of page 3 of this thread. You can also see the old paint brush I use to make the streaks of woodgrain.
4. After smearing on the paint, I start to make streaks of grain, and as the paint dries over the course of a few minutes, the streaks start to take shape better as the mineral spirit dries off a bit.
5. After all streaks look good, and there are no smudges, odd lines, and no finger prints (!) I set it carefully aside for a couple of days.
6. It's best to work on small sections at a time, then when they are dry (at least a couple of days) then I gloss coat them and continue with the next sections.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Gary
