The Ship Model Forum

I am well aware of the popularity of pastel weathering on this site, particularly for rust stains! However, how have you more experienced modelers gone about sealing in your hard work? Most attempts at matte-coating have ended abysmally for me (usually resulting in an entire loss of streaking).

Pastel or pigment streaking is fragile and can easily be accidentally removed during handling. Sealing them with a matte coat can cause them to darken, or sometimes just disappear as you noted. I prefer oil paint streaking - when dry it's permanent, and doesn't darken or disappear under a protective coat.

I agree with biggles for the artists oil paints for things like streaking. I use pastels to show soot around funnels, or weathering on the decks.

The trick with pastels is to experiment. As a general rule, you need to apply more pastels than you want on a particular area, because, as you have seen, the flat coat and blow the pastel right off the model.

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An unusual method that I discovered was to hairy brush the sealing varnish in the same direction of the weathering pastel. I did this for my Hermes' hull and it came out better than I had feared! If you do want to use this method on purpose, be sure to under-do the streaking before applying the varnish, since the brush strokes will pull the pastel powder in the stroke direction.

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