wood painting question

There have been several threads on this in the past, but here's my quick version:

Do a first set of wet passes with your "dark" wood colors in the direction of the grain, allowing them to streak.

When that's dry, do some "semi-dry brushing" with your lighter wood hues.

For weathered wood, weather it from this point with the rest of your model.

For finished wood, dry-brush with a bit of turn-signal amber (it will add "life" to the wood finish) and overcoat with thinned clear yellow or clear orange.

I do wood with oil paints, because their slow drying time gives me plenty of time to mess around. First I mix a base color, a medium tan-a bit of burnt umber, a bit of raw sienna, and some white, and paint everything with that. Then I add streaks with burnt sienna and raw umber while the base coat's still wet, semi-blending in the streaks, and then gently go over everything with light strokes of a soft brush, to soften the color transitions and add a bit of grain.

Of course, the base coat can vary depending on what kind of wood you're trying to simulate. On this project, I was trying to get a maple sort of look, so my base coat was paler and less yellow:

i193.photobucket.com/albums/z256/hilbyf/RFD%20taxi/DSCN3308.jpg

...and for weathered wood, I'd use a more grey base coat.



Fred Mellini and others here on the board use a very successful drybrush technique--with any luck, Fred will pop in with an explanation. Failing that, you might try a search on "drybrush"?