Colouring Castings with PanPastels

The stumps, crates, lumber stacks and dogs that we tried finishing using PanPastels. One can see some  finished casting, while others are just primed or in process of being finishing in this photo. The products we tried are also found included.

 PanPastels and O Scale Casting

Peter Mumby and I get together each Monday through the winter to work on modeling projects that are of common interests. We have been playing around lately with PanPastels...Peter will fill you in now...George Dutka

Here we see three stumps. One is primed. The middle stump has had Hunterline stain added and the finished stump coloured with the four PanPastels seen in the photo.

Photos and text by...Peter Mumby
Over the last few weeks we have been weathering freight cars using PanPastels.  We have found that they are quick and easy to use, with minimal mess and no offensive odour.  They are particularly good for an overall dulling of the car's finish; for more subtle effects, dry brushing and weathering powders still have their place.

This time around we decided to try colouring some 1:48 detail castings with the PanPastels as the principal medium.  We had some stumps and wood bundles (both plaster castings from Produits MP), and a group of dogs ( slippery plastic castings of unknown origin picked up at a train show).

All the detail pieces were given an initial spray of grey primer. Once the primer was dry a wash of Hunterline stain is applied. The stumps were coloured first, using the dark grey pastels on the bark areas.  Light grey and raw umber were used on the top (cut) portion of each stump.  The wood bundles were brushed with light grey and raw umber as well.  The banding was highlighted with a black Sharpie marker.  We were quite pleased with the final appearance of all the plaster castings.  The dogs were coloured with either greys or red/ browns, according to their apparent breed.  We weren't entirely pleased with how the dogs turned out; probably the plastic material just didn't hold the pastel colours as well as the plaster.  

Check out the photos and see what you think.  Working with the PanPastels has been fun and instructive - I'm sure we'll find more applications in future projects!

Three of the dogs we applied PanPastels to. We used a marker to add the eyes. George added a coat of Bragdon powders to his dogs at a later date which appeared to colour them better.

One of the finished stumps is planted on Peter Mumby's module.

Here we have a few of the finished stumps and dogs.