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First I went to the hardware store and got some light grey and some dark grey paint. I painted the boat and let it cure out, which took forever. A hairdryer may have helped, I don't know. The Robbe plan has the attack scope in front of the sky periscope, which is why I have it backward in the pic below. The Robbe plan is wrong.
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On the conning tower I used a thin mixture of the dark grey and a dash of black. Each time that I dipped the brush in, I would wipe it on the newspapers until it was about half-dry, then start pecking the tower at random to give it a dirty look. (drybrushing) I used plain black, dried almost all the way out of the brush, to peck in some extra darkness in the light wells and the other little hatch on the "nose". When I first did the whole tower, I got too much black on. So I sprayed some of the light grey into a jar, and drybrushed that back on to get back to where I wanted to be.
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For the hull I started with some vertical black streaks. The paint had a lot of thinner so it was watery and I had to keep drying the brush after I dipped it or else it would just run down the boat. The streaks look a little darker in this shot than they really were. Their true color is shown better in the next cell down.
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Next I had straight thinner in a jar. Well, it had just a little bit of the light grey in it, but that didn't really matter. What I did was dip my brush in the thinner, dry it out about half way, then peck the black streaks to dither them out. It left a nice "cruddy" look, with vertical streaking as an impression. This is the first boat I ever painted and you will be surprised how easy this is to do. You can see it done halfway in the pic below. What you are doing is just redistributing the black/grey band with some fresh thinner.
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I was the least satisfied with the rust, but I'll share my main problems. I did not start with a smooth surface. I used chalk, brown, and not ground up. You need to have a smooth surface. After you clearcoat over the chalks, they are much more diminished than how they started out. This means you have to apply heavily, which means you have to really grind your chalkstick onto the boat. I don't see how anyone can grind it up ahead of time and then brush it on. I tried, but it seemed like a lost cause. Anyway, after I chalk it up, I go back with my dry finger and smooth it out, the way an artist will rub a charcoal drawing with the heal of their hand. When there are imperfections in your paint, it makes irregularities which are annoying. I was determined not to airbrush, but I bet that would have been better. I still may, on a rainy weekend. Also I used white chalk, making vertical streaks, then rubbing them out with my finger. It looked like I had WAY too much white on there, but I knew it would diminish. Well, it did. It almost disappeared! Think about what happens when white clothing gets wet. You can see right through it. Same story here. So if you're chalking white, lay it on thick.
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I don't have any in-process shots of the deck, but I basically painted it dark grey, then went back and drybrushed black onto it, then went back and drybrushed VERY thin white onto it to give some saltspray/sunbleach to it. NB: You MUST put the deck altogether and paint it as a unit or you will end up with a color difference right at the interface, like I did. (woops!) Also if the thinner is in contact with paint for more than about ten seconds, it will start to pucker and lift the base coat. I found this out the hard way on the deck. I just sanded it down a little and left it rough, but dashed some more paint on. I like the crusty look on the deck especially. If you see the thinner is not going to dry out immediately, blow it off the deck (or hull) forcefully to save the base coat. You can come back in a minute with a mostly dry brush and hide the streak you made.
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Here is a couple shots of the "done" boat. --- hah!... it's never really done. I'm also planning to go over it with another coat of clear dullcoat, and then use some steel wool all over it to really dull it out.
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I will post more as I have time to work on the project. Thanks, --Jason Overhulser |
