rusty pipe

[Bill Gill]

On a nice sunny, warm couple days, experimented making some rusty pipes out of a couple sizes of plastic straws. Some straws were opaque black, others were translucent brown.

Here's brief description of what was done:
Sprayed the straws with either Walmart's "Color Choice" flat black or Rustoleum flat brown.
Next day applied many washes (20-25) of craft acrylics, a little gouache and/or a smidge of real rust mixed into some matte acrylic varnish.
Colors used in descending volume of use: dark burnt umber, burnt umber, terracotta, black, Bambi brown (Ceramcoat), warm white, Indian Red (gouache), black.

The washes varied between thin and extremely thin. Added several overall thicker, really wet layers (rotating the straw horizontally until the wet sheen disappeared so the color would not all settle along the bottom). After that base of multiple different single colors, applied mixed layers wet-on-wet, then some random splotches of colors, diluting any spots that were too distinct. Then blended everything with more thin overall layers.

[finescalerr]

Sounds messy and time consuming but the technique looks effective. Satisfactory. -- Russ

[Bill Gill]

Russ, It can get messy, that's why I painted outside, but it didn't take as long as it sounds.
Each wash only took a few seconds. The splotching (technical term) took less than a minute.
By the time I added a wash to the last straw the first was ready for its next wash.
And It used what I had on hand, no trips to store or waiting for delivery

[Hydrostat]

Bill,

very convincing. I do especially like the upper one and the second to the last. The latter looks very much like an excavated, dusty/dirty pipe. I think a common 'mistake' in modelling is trying to get to an effect by avoiding 'effort'.

Cheers,
Volker

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, Volker. I enjoyed seeing what different effects I could get by changing the order of colors applied, number of washes, etc.
The 'effort' was interesting and enjoyable.
Surprisingly, whether the straws were sprayed with the flat black or the flat brown made no different in the final results.

[Ray Dunakin]

Very convincing! No one would guess those are plastic straws.