Weathering powders

Thanks. Are powdered pastel really the same as weathering powders? Pastels are usually oil-based, aren't they? Guy

Weathering powders vary. Powdered pastels are sticky, because (yes) they are oil based, so a lot of people have made their own weathering powders out of pastels. Same with powdered chalks. Bragdon Enterprises say their weathering powders are real rust, etc, ball milled to a few microns in size, and mixed with a solid glue. Presumably that means they'll stick better. Whether they look better is a matter of taste and aesthetic judgment. One of the things many modellers overlook is that "realism" isn't the same as scaling down down the prototype. Besides, as C S Lewis pointed out "like life" and "lifelike" do not mean the same. Eg, many "true stories" are so badly written that they aren't lifelike at all.

Thing is, at "normal viewing distances" of a couple of feet or more, what matters is the overall impression of your layout, not the techniques you used to achieve it. Use the techniques that work for you.

The overall impression depends more on the colour palette and the careful avoidance of shiny surfaces (shiny surfaces look shiny only when they are reflecting something, actually.) I myself prefer matte colour washes and dry brushing to weathering powders. The best weathering I ever saw was done by a friend who simply painted his models to match photographs, then sprayed them with matte or semi-matte clear varnish. IOW, he didn't try to "weather" his models, he just tried to make them look like their prototypes.

PS: for me, the realism killer is figures painted with gloss enamels.... ;-)

cheers, wolf k.

Aside: I used to subscribe to Military Modelling magazine; I never did really understand why people felt that figures looked good with deep shadows painted into the creases of their clothing. It always looked to me like a caricature of the real thing rather than a realistic model. Guy

The best weathering powders are extremely fine ground from the real thing...

Think understand what you mean, at exhibition recently saw the work of a proffesional on RTR coaches, the weathering didnt look an added extra but part of the overall colour scheme - as though paintwork had faded. Especially it varied and variation was subtle. Was wondering for long time what freight locos should look like in early

30's, not unkempt rusty but just well used. Finally saw colour picture in backtrack, ther was some rust on loco, but it was more the overall shade that found wanted to recreate.

Cheers, Simon

Not pastel Chalks.

Artists' pastels come in two types, oil and [not oil] - not sure what the correct name for the latter is. Oil pastels are slightly waxy, the other sort more like very refined crumbly chalk with (I believe) some gelatine-like binder. The high-art pastel work of old masters was normally done with the non-oil type.

The C&L weathering powders are pure pigments, with no sticky stuff to bind them. Bought some a couple of weeks ago, not got around to trying them yet.

David