I'm not an expert

I've tried to fade a couple cars and used very thin gray enamel.  Thin enough that I sprayed it and it looked wet then a couple seconds later the thinner flashed off and the painted faded slightly.  It took several layers.

Some reading:

http://therailwire.net/forum/index.php/topic,16573.0.html

Paul

Weathering-Shop

Dear ???

This worked for me...

http://www.theweatheringshop.com/dbrush.html

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

"I did my first "paint fade"

I use all the methods depending on the scale of the car and what effect I'm trying to achieve along with how much work I feel like doing at the time.

What scale are you modeling in?  An airbrush works best on larger scales like O or S while hand brushing is easier on N scale.  HO falls in the either airbrush or hand brush category for me. A basic fade can be obtained by spraying a car with dullcoat then misting it with alcohol.

Another way is to airbrush a fine mist of a lighter color such as Polly Scale rust or a lightened shade of the cars existing color.I usually shoot a little of what I start with and if I don't like the way it's turning out I try something else. If you have more patience you can use artists oils instead of acrylics to get more uniform fading but the drying time is very long.

Acrylics can be made to flow better with additives, and using a wider brush or a foam make up applicator helps also. Practice is the best way to figure out what works for you. Also a photo of a car similar to the model helps in deciding what colors and brushing patterns to use.

I can't recall doing many blue cars but here's an N scale hopper that was faded with what looks like a light gray or off white.

Sometimes blue cars fade lighter or sometimes they look darker from soot and road grime build up so that's where the photos can help.....DaveB
 

  Another blue car.

Another blue car. Remembered an HO boxcar that was in a photo I took of my layout benchwork.  It's an old Roundhouse 50 foot car. Looks like I faded it with some kind of off white or pale yellowish color then added darker grime along the bottom of the ends and sides. A bit of graffiti finished it up. The fade coat was probably done with a wide soft brush or a foam applicator, I doubt I bothered with an airbrush on this type of runner model....DaveB

Thanks guys.

A lot of very interesting reading and great ideas. Here's a quick photo of today's experiment. I know it is way over weathered.   After the fade problems ( I actually like the fade color but up close the imperfections are just too distracting) I turned it into a rust bucket just for the fun of it. 

 The sacrificial car is an HO scale bright blue Golden West that I had put graffiti decals on many years ago for a photo shoot. 

If you use dullcote.....

...and then go back over it with alcohol you will get a whitish fade to the paint. Real easy to overdo though so experiment.

Michael

I love to use Tom Mann's techniques...

For fades, I mix 1 part white, 1 part light grey and 2 parts Windex (or whatever thinner you use) and then airbrush on the fade in very light passes.

As with all weathering I find it is really easy to over do it and much harder to go for an understated effect.  A very light grey fade is one way to get a fleet of clearly weathered cars quickly without drawing the eye to any one car.

Anyway my $0.02

md

Dry brush fade

I second Prof's recommendation.  I found that method really easy to pick up, and I was happy with the results.  Here's a photo of a MILW F7 that got that treatment:

 ...and here are a couple more recipients, an ExactRail ex-Garvey Grain 4780cf covered hopper and an Intermountain ex-Chessie PS-2 boxcar that my prototype uses as a tool car: 

@Joe

 Really nice fade work and overall weathering. For the fades did you use the same Winton soft mixing white oil paint that was shown in the weathering shop tutorial?

Thanks Rick

Thanks Rick.  Yes, I used the exact same product that.  Very easy technique, and I found that it went quicker than I expected.  I think my latest car, that Chessie PS-2, only took about an hour, not counting dry time for the Dullcote between weathering coats.

Thanks Joe

Just one more thing. Did you dullcote your models before you started the fade or just work with factory surface?

Dullcote

I always dullcote everything before weathering, as well as between layers.  For the first layer, it gives more tooth for the weathering to "grip".  For subsequent coats, it seals the previous work.  If you keep 2-3 projects going at once, you always have something to work on while the other is drying.

Multiple methods for multiple results

I will use different methods of fading depending on the prototype I am modeling from.  As mentioned by Prof and Joe, Jeremy's oil paint drybrush fade works well and can give excellent results.  I haven't used it as much as other methods because not all my cars/locomotives will require a fade with white.  

On some projects the prototype shows a rather even level of fading across several different colors.  For these types of projects I will lean towards an airbrush fade.  I will make a mix of several colors of craft acrylics: sky gray (2-3 drops), charcoal gray (1 drop), raw umber (1 drop), and sometimes a color similar to the car I am weathering (terra cotta for mineral red/brown, light blue for blue, etc).  Mix these up, add some Windex to the consistency of skim milk, and shoot through the airbrush at ~30 PSI.  It is ESSENTIAL to go extremely light on the paint!!  It is very easy to overdo it.  You want to apply it so barely any mist is leaving the airbrush.....you almost should not see any perceptible change on the car.  Within a second or two it will dry and you will see the fade better.  If it's not to your liking, do another VERY LIGHT layer.  If you go to heavy you "frost" the car and there is very little that can be done at that point.  I use this technique maybe 25% of the time.  However, it is only the very beginning step of weathering....most of it will get covered up with subsequent steps.  Here are a couple projects that started off with a light airbrush fade:

The technique I use the most has been championed by Gary Christensen, the "color transition fade":  http://www.theweatheringshop.com/articlegcolor.html.  Read it through and follow it!  With a little practice, this method can be used in most weathering projects with excellent results.  You are able to control the exact color of the fade with this technique.  Not all cars/locomotives fade to white.  And with today's RTR market, you may not be able to arrive at the correct faded color by just using white or an airbrush.  Hence the color transition fade is an effective and easy way to solve that problem.  Time consuming?  Yes, it can be.  Tedious?  More so than an airbrush fade.  But the results are well worth the effort in my opinion.  Follow Gary's tutorial and experiment.  Once I figured out how it worked best in my hands I have used it for most of my projects.  In fact, I will still use it even if I did an airbrush fade....the airbrush will leave things too even, and a quick adjustment with color transitions will solve it. This project was done using only color transition fades...the green faded differently than the white, which was different from the red stripes:

This was also done with the color transition.....the original Athearn paint was far from the actual color I was trying to achieve so the only way to correct it was to do the color transition:

The other thing that is nice about color transition is that you can go darker rather than lighter, as in this case:

Bottom line is that I find the color transition technique to be the most versatile.  I do use the other techniques but not nearly as much as I do the color transition.  Which one I use depends on the prototype and the end-goal...every project is different.

-Kevin

Kevin

Outstanding work as always Kevin!

Question for you:  How do you determine when to use each technique?  I don't think I have a good eye for color, because to me, I would have guessed your SD70MAC to have been faded with the white drybrush method.

To be clear, I don't think the drybrush method is limited to just white.  I failed to mention it in the caption, but I used a variation of it with various rust-tone oils on the Rock Island covered hopper in my second pic on page 1.

For a general fade formula

I also follow Tom Mann's technique but with a slight modifiction or two.  I use thinned acrylic craft paints, so the total paint mix gets thinned 50% with window washer fluid.  the paint mix i use is 2 parts antique white (which is slightly yellow) two parts really light grey, and a drop or two of color close to the color of the car i'm doing.  So in the case of your GWS boxcar, I'd look for a drop or two of something like GWS blue or even conrail blue.

@Joe

Thanks!  And excellent work on that F7, hopper, and boxcar.  Great weathering on those.

Great question, let me see if I can answer it so it makes sense.  I will do the airbrush or oil fade if it looks like the prototype is a simple sunbleaching, and if I think I can arrive at the right color by simply lightening the factory paint.  Many projects aren't in the category....for example, that BNSF hopper above.  Simply lightening it with an airbrush or oil fade would turn the factory Athearn red into pink.  Though some BNSF hoppers exhibit that type of weathering, this prototype didn't.  That particular prototype was more of a orangish-red-terra cotta color, so I changed the factory color with a few acrylic washes.

I used an airbrush on 4177 because I noticed on prototype photograhs I had taken that the various paint colors all exhibited a uniform lightening or bleaching.  The orange, green, yellow, and black were all slightly faded on the prototype, so I mimicked that quickly with a very light airbrush fade.  Then I went back and adjusted the colors in a few spots with the color transition fade.

9624 looks like a fade with white, but when you look closer you can see the difference.  The original color was a dark green.  These prototype units tend to fade to almost a blue color.  If I had used white it would've turned into a light green.  Instead, I shifted the color to have that slight blue-ish tint that is a hallmark of these MACs, by washing with blue and green mixed acrylics.  The white was faded separately with a antique white, a color that has a slight yellow to it that gives it a great aged look.  

You're right, the oil fade can be done with other colors.  I've seen Jeff Meyer use it to good effect with a few other colors mixed in.  Thanks for making that clarification!

-Kevin

One thing about weathering is.....

...that I give every piece of rolling stock I have a very light dusting of my base earth color with my cheapie airbrush. It just stands to reason to me that they should have a very light base of the predominate ground cover on the layout. Just something I thought I'd throw out there. Sort of ties everything togehter.  I need to find help weathering steamers myself....

Michael

Trying the dry brush method

and I'm still not getting it right. Airbrush fade no problem but once I start using brushes I end up with streaks and inconsistencies. One thing I can't seem to understand is whether the oil paint should be thinned or not when applied. I went full strength and it was like having goop on the model. Kept brushing paint off but it never got to the even looking results I'm seeing from the examples in this thread.

 Should the paint be thinned (saw no mention of that in Jeremy's tutorial) and if so with what and how much. I don't usually have this kind of trouble when it comes to painting but this is eluding me.

 Thanks again for all the expert participation in this thread,

 Rick

or as the prof addresses me ???

Patience

I use a thinned white or light gray and using the smallest needle and low air on my air brush, just keep going over and over and over again until I get to where I think the look needs to be.  It's most assuredly a time and patience type of application.  The SCL box has in the neighborhood of 10 layers and 2 hours to get the fade shown here  

Jeff Youst EL Marion 2nd Sub 1964

Thanks Jeff

That boxcar is very nice. The difference in the fade between the left and right side....was that done as part of the fade or afterward? What were your steps after the fade?

 Thanks so much,

 Rick

Fade to left...or is it right...no left...no...

Thanks for the comment Rick.  The fade difference was done in the airbrush phase - I know a lot of guys use acrylic, but I prefer to use enamel for this effect. I think enamels, when spraying very, very lightly, atomize more evenly. My preference. 

I figured that the billboard side, with all that white paint, may reflect and bounce the sunlight around a bit more, resulting in more overall exposure than the other side, so I layered an extra pass or two.  Does that thought process have any merit from an astrophysicists standpoint?  Don't know. But eh, it worked for me and I liked it. 

The rest of the weathering was done with AIM powders, most notably light and dark earth and a little grimy black around the door hardware and what not.  The roof seam patches are sepia oil, put on a bit thick to simulate that goopy look of roofing tar. The same was used to create streaks in those locations down the car side. 

It's all pretty simplistic stuff.  You just have to get after it and keep trying different things and eventually you'll begin to amaze yourself and your friends.  It's truly not hard.  It helps to have proto photos of similar effects  you're going for as reference.  Like you said initially, it's getting over the "fear" of potentially messing up a good piece.  One you get past that, it becomes addictive man...!

Jeff Youst in Indiana

The Fade to the rescue.

The Fade to the rescue. Here's a couple of shots that show how the fade can cover damage or modifications to a model. The first shows  a Lionel O-27 HiCube partially converted to S scale and the second one shows how the fade coat blends in the old and the new after the new parts were painted a basic red.The basic fade in this instance was done with an airbrush because on S scale cars it's a lot faster. The airbrush took about 10 minutes where doing it with a brush might take half an hour. The second phase ,applications of various  area and streak colors was done with a hand brush, Q-tips, foam applicators, etc. Then a 3rd phase of graffiti and finer rust detail color . Maybe a 4th phase of light airbrush blending( can't recall if it was necessary on this one). I try to limit each phase to about 15 minutes of actual work, not counting finding the color of paints I need and clean up(if decals are needed for a phase it takes longer to cut and apply them then wait for them to set up before moving on). It's interesting that the larger models take more paint but the work is easier so  a tiny N scale car doesn't take any longer than an O scale whopper.... ...DaveB   

@DaveB

Dave, that's really nice. Thanks for the before and after shots. Is the dusty look from paint or do you use chalks to get that look?

I fade with an airbrush first.

I fade with my thinned white Floquil paint mixed with Testor's Dullcote.  After this application, I'll drybrush some white oil paint or a white mixed with Naples Yellow in the case of this Exactrail Milwaukee Road hopper.  I'll spray another coat of Dullcote and then add more weathering with rust washes and rust spots with rust streaks below them, all with oils.  This hopper was a bright yellow before I started.  I don't have a before photo but I think you guys know how bright some of these yellow hoppers are.  

I faded this Tangent Percival Grain hopper much the same way.  A thinned airbrush coat of white and some dry brushing with white, burnt sienna, and burnt umber oils with Dullcote applications in between.

Same with this Tangent ROCK covered hopper.  I faded it with my airbrush first.  This method is fast and gives you and even application to start with.  

And finally, the Tangent Highland Feeders hopper.  It was a brighter green to begin with.  Lots of dry brush fading with a mix of white and green oils on this one to get the effect in each panel.  

Tom Johnson