Acrysion - barva dřeva

A shade for crates, gun stocks and decks

Wood is everywhere on models and at the same time it is easily spoiled. Ammunition crates, rifle stocks, the handles of shovels and picks, the ladder sides of carts, planked decks and improvised duckboards in trenches should all have a warm brown tone that slips neither into orange nor into chocolate darkness. It is exactly such a middle shade that this bottle offers.

The best results come when the paint is taken as the first of two steps. An even area is sprayed or brushed on as a base and, once dry, a thin oil or enamel wash is drawn across it, with a stroke along the grain suggesting the figure of the wood. A thin oil streak, spread with a half-dry brush, creates growth rings more convincingly than any attempt to paint them directly.

The paint itself is thinned with water and gives off almost no smell during work, which anyone who paints in a living room will appreciate. Once dry it forms a firm film that takes both further coats and a final flat coat. Lighter grain is then suggested with a dry brush in an ocher tone, and a darker shadow with a drop of dark brown added to what is left of the paint on the palette.

By combining two tones from one bottle you can tell an old weathered plank from a freshly hewn beam.

Watch out for one common mistake. Planks never all have the same tone. It is enough for every third one to be colored slightly darker or lighter and a deck stops looking like printed paper. The differences should be subtle, visible only when seen from the side, otherwise the result slips into a variegation that in reality was nowhere to be found.