YoshiieBear
New Member
So firstly I'm not sure if this in the right place or not, but I'm hoping that it will be or will get put in the right place.
So! As the title states this is a sort of tutorial/showing how I do one of my favourite effects with props, woodgrain!
A year or so ago i was looking at things to do with my Nerf gun, various mods and paint schemes to do when I came across someone who had done a really nice woodgrain effect on a few of their Nerf guns, I found a link to a video he'd done showing how to get the desired effect and decided to give it a go myself. (if i find the video again or even the stuff i found in the first place I'll be sure to give a few links along the way)
The first woodgraining i did was on my old Nerf Maverick, but that'll have to come later as I believe the pictures of the wip and finished product are on my external hard drive. It's still by far my prized piece but I am happy with the other ones I've done too.
A list of what you'll need!
Black Paint primer - if possible, if not, grey or any colour will do as long as you then put another coat of black paint over it.
Black Paint - if you didn't get black primer.
White/off white/yellow/light blue acrylic paint - One tub of any of these colours will do, for best results I'd suggest an off white/yellow but white will do the job just as well.
Wood stain - spray paint or a tub will do, and in any type you want, dark or light wood, that's all about preference really.
Paint brushes
Masking tape
And thats about it for what you'll need I think.
So first I'll be showing you my most recent woodgrained prop, a plastic katana. I got this off of my sister who had it for her hen do and wasn't bothered about keeping it. I'd forgotten to take a picture of it fully constructed before hand so this is just a google image I found, it's pretty much that sword with slightly different end 'caps' and a dragon on either side of the sheath.
Firstly comes de-construction and prepping the surface for primer. The plastic this sword is made of isn't anything special, the sword is really light (too light if you ask me) and the plastic itself is flimsy and would bend easily, so if you plan on doing this with the same sword, don't go attacking somebody who's got a sturdier one, you'll come out worse.
So with the sword de-constructed and rubbed down with a bit of sandpaper I took it into my shed and applied just a single coat of grey primer (my local shop was out of black primer otherwise I'd have just used 2 coats of black primer, maybe even just once coat would do it)
Once the grey primer was dried I added a coat of black matt paint. The black paint (or black primer) is the base for all of of the work and is essential. I masked off an area on the blade of the sword as I wanted to give the blade a black upper and grey lower but it didn't work too well as the masking tape took some of the paint off.
After this was done I brought the whole thing inside to start the process to make it look like wood.
What comes next can take a long time or it can go very quickly, on the sword I was a little impatient and wanted it to be done quick so I was heavy handed on it and in my opinion it shows and does effect the end product, but I'm still happy with how it looks.
Okay, so now you've got your prop painted black and it's dry, you need to dry brush it with your white paint. The process of dry brushing is fairly simple, get some of the paint on your brush, then paint most of it off onto paper/something other than your prop until you're left with only a bit on your brush and this you simply drag along your prop which will leave various sized and shaped white lines form your brushes bristles.
Ideally you don't want a lot on each coat, you want to faintly paint over the black so you have white lines showing, all going the same way (otherwise your wood will look crisscross and very odd) Don't cover the black either. This process builds up layer by layer, so start slowly, each time you dry brush a layer of white you'll want to brush over a different part of the black so that by the last few layers won't have any black showing at all.
So, once you've dry brushed your first layer of white wait until that has dried and then coat it in a layer of the wood stain paint you've got. (Spray paint wood stain works just as well as brushing it over, again that's just preference, they take about the same amount of time including applying and drying)
After this coat of wood stain has dried you'll apply another coat of the dry brushed white paint and then the process is repeated until you're happy with the result you've achieved!
Just to explain why/how this works if people were curious, (you should be able to tell from the pictures but still) the wood stain paint only shows up on the white staining it the wood colour and not on the black, each time you build up the white dry brush and apply another coat of wood stain the layer underneath it gets darker, meaning the top most coat will be the lightest part of 'wood' and the bottom most coat of white will be the darkest part of the 'wood' So if you want a dark wood many layers may be needed where as if you want a lighter wood fewer layers are needed.
Even once your final layer has dried you can add another layer of the wood stain just to give it an all over layer making every layer darker but you will still have different parts different shades due to the layers.
I've tried to explain this as best I can and hopefully the pictures show help a lot too any questions just ask and I'll be happy to help.
I'll add another bit once I find the Nerf gun pictures so you can see different results.
(I'm not sure all the pictures are atatched but if I've missed any out I'll ad them later in an edit)
So! As the title states this is a sort of tutorial/showing how I do one of my favourite effects with props, woodgrain!
A year or so ago i was looking at things to do with my Nerf gun, various mods and paint schemes to do when I came across someone who had done a really nice woodgrain effect on a few of their Nerf guns, I found a link to a video he'd done showing how to get the desired effect and decided to give it a go myself. (if i find the video again or even the stuff i found in the first place I'll be sure to give a few links along the way)
The first woodgraining i did was on my old Nerf Maverick, but that'll have to come later as I believe the pictures of the wip and finished product are on my external hard drive. It's still by far my prized piece but I am happy with the other ones I've done too.
A list of what you'll need!
Black Paint primer - if possible, if not, grey or any colour will do as long as you then put another coat of black paint over it.
Black Paint - if you didn't get black primer.
White/off white/yellow/light blue acrylic paint - One tub of any of these colours will do, for best results I'd suggest an off white/yellow but white will do the job just as well.
Wood stain - spray paint or a tub will do, and in any type you want, dark or light wood, that's all about preference really.
Paint brushes
Masking tape
And thats about it for what you'll need I think.
So first I'll be showing you my most recent woodgrained prop, a plastic katana. I got this off of my sister who had it for her hen do and wasn't bothered about keeping it. I'd forgotten to take a picture of it fully constructed before hand so this is just a google image I found, it's pretty much that sword with slightly different end 'caps' and a dragon on either side of the sheath.
Firstly comes de-construction and prepping the surface for primer. The plastic this sword is made of isn't anything special, the sword is really light (too light if you ask me) and the plastic itself is flimsy and would bend easily, so if you plan on doing this with the same sword, don't go attacking somebody who's got a sturdier one, you'll come out worse.
So with the sword de-constructed and rubbed down with a bit of sandpaper I took it into my shed and applied just a single coat of grey primer (my local shop was out of black primer otherwise I'd have just used 2 coats of black primer, maybe even just once coat would do it)
Once the grey primer was dried I added a coat of black matt paint. The black paint (or black primer) is the base for all of of the work and is essential. I masked off an area on the blade of the sword as I wanted to give the blade a black upper and grey lower but it didn't work too well as the masking tape took some of the paint off.
After this was done I brought the whole thing inside to start the process to make it look like wood.
What comes next can take a long time or it can go very quickly, on the sword I was a little impatient and wanted it to be done quick so I was heavy handed on it and in my opinion it shows and does effect the end product, but I'm still happy with how it looks.
Okay, so now you've got your prop painted black and it's dry, you need to dry brush it with your white paint. The process of dry brushing is fairly simple, get some of the paint on your brush, then paint most of it off onto paper/something other than your prop until you're left with only a bit on your brush and this you simply drag along your prop which will leave various sized and shaped white lines form your brushes bristles.
Ideally you don't want a lot on each coat, you want to faintly paint over the black so you have white lines showing, all going the same way (otherwise your wood will look crisscross and very odd) Don't cover the black either. This process builds up layer by layer, so start slowly, each time you dry brush a layer of white you'll want to brush over a different part of the black so that by the last few layers won't have any black showing at all.
So, once you've dry brushed your first layer of white wait until that has dried and then coat it in a layer of the wood stain paint you've got. (Spray paint wood stain works just as well as brushing it over, again that's just preference, they take about the same amount of time including applying and drying)
After this coat of wood stain has dried you'll apply another coat of the dry brushed white paint and then the process is repeated until you're happy with the result you've achieved!
Just to explain why/how this works if people were curious, (you should be able to tell from the pictures but still) the wood stain paint only shows up on the white staining it the wood colour and not on the black, each time you build up the white dry brush and apply another coat of wood stain the layer underneath it gets darker, meaning the top most coat will be the lightest part of 'wood' and the bottom most coat of white will be the darkest part of the 'wood' So if you want a dark wood many layers may be needed where as if you want a lighter wood fewer layers are needed.
Even once your final layer has dried you can add another layer of the wood stain just to give it an all over layer making every layer darker but you will still have different parts different shades due to the layers.
I've tried to explain this as best I can and hopefully the pictures show help a lot too any questions just ask and I'll be happy to help.
I'll add another bit once I find the Nerf gun pictures so you can see different results.
(I'm not sure all the pictures are atatched but if I've missed any out I'll ad them later in an edit)
