Wood & Leather

Two materials that make a model convincing

Wood and leather turn up in almost every scene. The stock of a rifle, a barrel in a diorama, a saddle, a satchel, a cart wheel and the floor of a workshop. Both have the same thing in common: the color is never even, something has always faded in one place and darkened in another. The eight shades in this set are put together so that this spread can be created without mixing further colors.

How the shades complement one another

• Light sand as the lightest base for new, unweathered wood
• Orange brown and earth brown for the middle tones of planks and strapping
• Chocolate brown for dark tanned leather and for stained wood
• A Japanese uniform shade as a grayed midtone between brown and khaki
• A special wood grain tone for suggesting the growth rings
• A smoke color as a translucent glaze for grooves and joints
• Black for the deepest shadows and for ironwork

The key is the last of these. The smoke is applied heavily thinned and runs into the engraved joints by itself, so it turns a flat surface into planks. The same trick works on leather, where it brings out the stitching and the folds where the material bends.

The set suits dioramas, carts, figures with leather gear and ship models, where a wooden deck is the main feature on view. The paints are water-based acrylics with a dropper, they are thinned with water and stay matte once dry.

One more piece of advice on wood: never paint two planks side by side in the same tone. Just add a drop of a lighter color and shift the second plank slightly, and the surface immediately stops reading as a single casting.