How to Paint Realistic Rocks

Hello and welcome to a Model Railroad Academy video. In this video, we will paint rock sides and we will focus on the rock sides with a lot of iron in them. So reddish, iron, mineral-type rock sides. This is what our prototype looks like. It's a rock side with the high content of iron. I typically cast these type of rock sides using rubber molds and fill them with Woodland Scenics hydrocal. Once dry, they look something like this. You may have noticed that there are two umber brown colors available, raw and burnt. The raw umber is more neutrally brown, whilst the burnt umber is more reddish brown. Therefore, in this project, burnt umber is preferred. The paint should be mixed really thin. Use water as a thinner. In this example, I use a paint brush, but for larger surfaces, I would use a flower sprayer. Once dry, it will look something like this. Now it's time to paint some details. Before that, I set aside some of the paint in a separate container. The colors I use for the detail painting is yellow, white, and burnt umber. I'm starting off with the yellowish details. applying them accordingly, looking at the prototype, and then I continue with the red and then, lastly, some dark brown areas. Yeah, I think this is about it. Now it's time to make a wash. For this, I mix the original color with more burnt umber. Add a lot of water and a portion of black to get a darker shade of this color. Again, if you're working with a larger surface, I would typically apply this wash using a flower sprayer. Here instead, I'm adding it on the top of the rock side and then spraying water isopropanol on top, and it will float over the entire surface. And this is what it looks like when it has dried. Now only one step remains, and that is a layer of light brown, which will be dry-brushed to highlight the contours of this rock side. I wipe most of the paint off on a piece of paper and then dry-brush until the contours of the rock side stands out a bit. Yeah, it starts to look good. All right. If this video helps you with your hobby, please consider to level up, gain access to the premium content here on Model Railroad Academy. It's a bit more in-depth, and we'll take your creations to the next level. See you in there.