Straightforward way to paint wooden decks.

[sargentx]

The concept is really simple: Basically, you shade the individual boards with a pencil before you spray your deck colour. The shaded boards show up through your airbrush deck colour as differentiated planks. The look is very harmonious and convincing. It's a nice approach because the pencil is sharp and easy to apply with great accuracy and control. Take things a step further and apply some kind of pin-wash to the decks BEFORE you airbrush to darken the cracks and the effect is even better.

Step 1:
Take a sharp pencil, I use an HB hardness. Directly onto the raw, unpainted plastic (or it could be primed as well) Use the pencil to shade the boards different darknesses. Your decks should be a grey colour that is similar in darkness/lightness to the desired wood colour. Shading: On Trumpeter style decks with the individual boards it's straightforward. For Tamiya style decks I run the pencil between the raised 'cracks' in about 4" lengths. Don't be afraid to make many of the boards as dark as the pencil will go. You're going to be spraying on top of this so make it punchy. Really make the boards pop...very different from each other. Some black, some grey, some the colour of the plastic. Try to make the pattern look random and balanced. I've had good luck using a white grease pencil to make some of the boards lighter than the grey. The final result will be about 50% as visible as this step. Be bold.

Step 2:
When the boards look effectively differentiated, coat the deck with a spray of Krylon matte finish to give the penciling some tooth for your airbrushing. Mix up a deck colour for your airbrush. The idea here is that you're going to lightly spray the decks until all the previous stuff is barely visible. The boards that you've shaded show through the airbrush layer and appear to be different colours/darknesses of the same wood tone. The trick here is to mix a deck colour that, when sprayed onto your base stuff lightly, will yield the colour you want. Don't overdo it with the spray!!! If you cover up all your penciling you've achieved nothing and the nice, wooden look is lost. The grey of the plastic is part of the final colour. Think 50% coverage.

Step 3:
When this light airbrush layer is dry, use paint thinner and black oil paint to lightly do a wash over the decks to make the cracks pop. I also use washes of grey and brown to affect salt stains, fading, and grime. Easy peasy!

[Emre ?lter]

Very nice and effective.. Can you talk more about your deck color mix in step 3? which colors you using for your mix?
Big Thanks

[Zad Fnark]

+1

Another method of pre-shading I hadn't thought of. I never would have tried painting over pencil marks.

Just have to be gentle layering on the wood color.

Ed-

[Stephen J]

Any make pencil you would use?

[sargentx]

Any pencil will do...just B.
If you hit your penciling with a matte finish, it will have tooth and will take your light dusting of airbrush perfectly. It works great.

[sargentx]

Deck colour:
I don't ever use pre-made colours. I mix my colours by eye and feel. Usually my deck colour consists of an earthy colour like a tan plus white, plus something to kill i a bit like black or raw umber (dull brown). It's different for different ships. I usually mix a colour that's pretty close in darkness/lightness/tone to the grey plastic. Even if you don't do a black wash on your boards before you start, the penciling works great. Finish off with a pin wash and it's done. It usually only takes me about an hour to do my decks, but they often elicit amazement at how time consuming they must have been!

[blacman]

Hello Sargentx ,

I applied you technique for my Kirishima deck (1/700). Worked perfectly! Thanks a lot!



I did small modification - after final layer of deck color dried I used yellow pencils - few different tones and slightly of white.

Greg

[sargentx]

looks great man! thanks for sharing

[hawkeye3d]

Really nice technique, but how do you then get the deck fittings into the same color as the hull/superstructure without getting that color all over the painted deck. I�ve tried and no amount of masking or using tiny brushes seems to not get some paint onto the deck itself. Maybe it�s just my fat fingers and too much caffeine or beer

Bob

[sargentx]

tiny brushes and an optivisor! I never mask anything but camouflage. I do the little fittings after the deck is done. I built a little bridge to rest my hand on and I just go slow and tiny.

[Jeffcsr]

This is a great idea, just what I needed to help make my CV decks look better!

Thanks

[Uzun Elendil]

Dear Sargentx,

I'm following this forum for over 3 years now and you are the one of the few people who share their tips or techniques very in detail, (of cour many modelers here try to help, bu noly some of them has such details) therefore I appricate you a lot.

Thanks to the modelers like you, this hobby would improve and the results would be better and better in the coming years.

Also your effort in order to explain something is always high. For example here you just not write your technique but also show the pictures of it. (Also in your ocean technique)

Again thank you for your all of your efforts and helps.

[Vlad]

Chris,

I normally do this backwards, paint the deck then rub some planks with various shades of brown and grey pencil.

I want to give your technique a try but I am exclusively a brush painter. Do you have any suggestions for how to adapt your technique to brush paint a matte coat or tan deck paint over the pencil without having it run and smudge everywhere?

Thanks!

[sargentx]

Hmm, after some thought I don't see a way to do the same thing, then brush paint on top. What you've been doing seems to be the best solution: Paint the deck one colour first, then go with some dry medium such as pencil and lightly shade the individual boards. A q-tip could be used to smudge them in a bit to get them to blend. Another possibility would be to do as you do and paint the decks one colour, then heavily pencil in the boards. Then take oil paint that is the same colour as the deck and lightly dry brush and buff a thin layer on top to set everything back and to mellow it out a bit.
That's what I'd try.

[Vlad]

Thank you, I will have to try that and see how much the dry-brushing alters the underlying pencil. Why specifically oils as opposed to enamels though?

[dbiggied]

Awesome tip, and awesome models! Having said that, it it possible that a layer of pencil might lessen the adhesion of the following paint layers? Have you experienced any issues with peeling or flaking?

[sargentx]

Remember that you're spraying the deck with Matte Medium before you paint it...so this really prevents any adhesion problems.

[frenchinamst]

i think it is also interesting to know that when the wooden deck is supposed to be wet (for diorama), the wood (teck mostly) look more dark and matt finish.

[sargentx]

Ah yes... the issue of wet decks. Darker is definitely a good way to go. Just a wash of darker oil like black or brown. I've experimented with gloss decks and am on the fence. Different sheens make for amazing photographs, but in life, well, it's debatable. If you do do some gloss it's got to be done with great care. In a rough sea, it's very logical to have reflective surfaces. YOu'd definitely see that from an airplane. extremely wet decks can be almost mirror like...but I mean WET. Real judgment call there.

[LordAnkarin]

Does it work well over PE decks? Idk if the pencil will stick to the brass, or if I should spray some matte finish before and after the pencil.
Working on my Bismarck, and really looking at all options before painting. Between the planks and the swastika banners, I'm sure this thing will give me a stroke before I'm 26.