Using black (or not so black) paint to achieve greater realism in your models
Since we're on this weathering thread, I figured I'd throw in a couple ideas. Sorry the picture isn't any kind of drag-related vehicle, although its 1:1 counterpart has spent many hours parked at 4 local dragstrips while I sat in the stands (maybe that counts a little).

What you see in the picture is extremely lightly weathered, maybe 50,000 road miles worth of weathering at the most. The driveshaft is painted in Pactra Rust, but you could mix up a modern equivalent easily enough. I applied a wash of flat black around the u-joints, followed that with a wash over the whole driveshaft with Testors Rubber, then drybrushed a lighter shade of Rust on the details.

The entire rear axle was slobbered down with Krylon Ultra Flat Black, then washes of Testors Rubber, Model Master Military Brown, and Model Master Leather were applied to strategic locations. I then very lightly drybrushed a mix of Testors Silver and flat black around some of the high spots to give it a metallic look without actually showing any bare metal.

To make the sway bar stand out, I brushed on Future. If you look around the ends of the axles and the ends of the front lower control arms, you'll see the dark brown of Testors Rubber, this time drybrushed to simulate accumulations of brake dust.

Toward the differential, there's more of the lighter Model Master Leather to look more like rust and dirt. The plastic cover on the bottom of the fuel tank was heavily drybrushed with various gray shades, then lightly drybrushed at its lowest points with Model Master Armor Sand mixed with some Light Aircraft Gray.

The light gray portion of the chassis was heavily washed with flat black mixed with flat white to produce a dark gray, then drybrushed with a couple of shades of light gray.

The exhausts were painted Alclad Aluminum with Alclad Steel cats, then I shot the bends and areas around the flanges and crossover with Alclad Pale Gold and Pale Burnt Metal. It's important not to overdo those colors.

After the Alclad gassed out, I again liberally washed the whole thing with flat black, then Testors Rubber. The cats were heavily drybrushed with Rubber and Military Brown. Then I applied a wash of flat black to the depressions to bring them out a little.

When the car was complete, I finally rubbed a good dose of dark grey pastel chalk over the whole thing, rubbed the high spots off with my finger, and followed that with a lighter rubbing of reddish-tan pastel chalk.

Again, it's not any kind of racer, but I think some of the techniques translate over to drag subjects. In order to have a basecoat that survives all the washes and drybrushing, I use a lot of the extremely tough Krylon Ultra Flat Black and basecoats of other colors are almost always lacquers.

Seriously I am no artist. Folks who watched every step of this car's build and those of you who've had a chance to see the "tips" generated by this build know that the same results are within the reach of anyone with a paintbrush. Sometimes, it's a matter of "breaking out of the mold" in how you present a model car; other times, it's just plain old seeing (or reading) how someone else did it.

Before I drone on too long, lemme just say 'thanks' one more time and leave you with a little old-fashioned tip that you might like, taught to me by a couple of airplane modelers:

You know how much trouble it is to paint the numbers on gauges or even to get a decent paint job on the instrument bezels? We've tried everything, right? Toothpicks, #0000000000 brushes, you name it. Try this: Sanford Prismacolor pencils. The silver ones produce beautiful bezels with about 1/10 the effort you'd expend by painting, the white ones can be shaped so you can get to the insides and paint those numbers and such. I also use Neon Red and can usually color just the needles without any problem.

I have a lot of cool painting hints to share that you might like and because this is about black and the car is black. Black cars might seem to be difficult to pull off, but a couple of well-placed bits of less-than-black will help the illusion a lot. Here
goes...

Before you open the enclosed picture (below), go outside and take a look at your own car. Make a note of the color of the tires, open the hood and note the color of the accessory drive belt, check out the plastic bits like the radiator shroud and remember what color they are, look at all the black things and ask yourself, "What color are these things really?"

If you just sat here and said, "black", well, maybe this post will represent a small change in your modeling that'll make the experience more rewarding. If you went outside and have now come back and said, "hmmm...they're all different shades of dark gray", well, your eyes are opened already! Sure, there are some black things there, especially if the car's relatively new, but a lot of those black things aren't. You can now open the enclosed picture whenever you want. The point to this paragraph, then, is that black is often (but not always) best represented in a model with shades of dark gray.

Kit instructions have you paint most black parts flat black for
simplicity's sake. Some companies make a distinction between flat black and gloss black. The glossiness of a finish is called "reflectance" and if you take advantage Of the fact that everything under your hood is likely to have a different reflectance based on its composition and its exposure to heat and dirt, you may find that you don't paint any two things under your model hoods with the same black again.

Now we have two distinctions between black components:
the shade of black (or dark gray really) and the reflectance (how
glossy or flat it is).

In the picture, note the plastic and rubber components
you see while I run down the various blacks, grays, washes, and drybrushings to produce those effects.

First off, check out what you can see of the serpentine belt. Note that the alternator pulley is also black, but you can see a difference between the pulley and the belt. The whole pile of pulleys and belts in these kits are one part, so it takes a little creativity to make some separation between all the components that are separate in real life.

To start out with, I thinned the back edges of the belt; you'll notice all those belts are skinnier at one side than they are at the other. That allows the part to come out of the mold; it's not there because it's realistic. After thinning it down some (sanding and scraping with the X-acto), I shot the whole thing in Krylon Ultra Flat Black. As the belt wears on the side that touches more of the pulleys, it leaves a brown dust. Remember that. The topside of the belt becomes grayer as it gets older. So, the first order of business was to apply a relatively dark wash of Testors Rubber to the "inside" edges of
the belt. When that's dry, drybrush the "top" of the belt with either some dark gray or mix up a bit of flat black with flat white and drybrush that onto the belt. Now, more lightly drybrush just the edges of the belt with the same flat black/flat white mix, but mix in a little more flat white so the edges are a lighter color--not a lot lighter, though; remember, subtlety is the key here. The effect doesn't have to register on the eye in order to register on the brain.

With your drybrushing done, apply straight flat black to anywhere your weathering slopped over onto the pulleys, let the pulleys dry, then paint over them with Future (floor wax). Now, you've created a visual difference between both the color and the reflectance of the belt and the pulleys it rides on. They look like separate parts. To complete the effect, apply a thin wash of flat black where pulleys and belt meet.

Remember to be subtle; you don't want it to be cartoonish, with everything outlined with a black line. By the way, why not just use gloss black on the pulleys? Simple: I have a harder time controlling gloss black. It's just easier for me to gloss up a part with Future when I need to. Plus, gloss black takes forever to dry.

The radiator shroud started out flat black, but I drybrushed it three times with progressively lighter shades of gray, applied a very heavy wash (more paint in the thinner than usual) of flat black, waited a day, then used a #0 brush lightly loaded with thinner to blend the light and dark areas. You'll notice that the heaviest wash is around the overflow cap, where I wanted the cap to look like a separate part. To give the shroud a more "plastic" look, I then overcoated the whole works with a 50/50 mix of Future and water.

The plastic pipes between the throttle bodies and mass air meter, air cleaner, and mass-air meter were all painted Krylon Semi-gloss Black. I applied a flat black wash to the whole thing, then a light gray wash to the mass air meter, drybrushed the mass air meter with straight Testors silver, threw a dark gray wash on that, then repainted the sensor on the meter flat black. After all that dried, I had a more flat than semi-gloss appearance to the whole thing, so I coated the retaining ring for the air cleaner and the rectangular sensor on the mass air meter with straight Future. Now
the whole assembly looks like many different parts. To top it off, I threw on some ribbons of BMF on both sides of the mass air meter and in front of the throttle bodies. I had to use CA to get them to stick, though.

The alternator should be aluminum color, right? Yep, but that thing gets some grime on it and doesn't stay all aluminum color long. I painted it with a blue-ish gray, Light Aircraft Gray, I think, applied an extremely dark wash of flat black on it to bring out the vent hole detail on the front (the front came from a Revell Miata, by the way), then lightly drybrushed the edges and areas around the vents in the front with a mix of the gray and Testors Silver. I use silver for most drybrushing because the metallic particles are smaller than those in Aluminum, so you get a less flaky looking finish. When you drybrush metallics, take it really easy. You don't want streaks of metallic or especially a big difference between the metallic paint and the gray underneath. Remember, you're fooling the brain, which already thinks it sees a metallic alternator anyway and will help you complete the illusion if you don't overdo it.

The intake manifold and cam covers were shot in Cobra Colors Arctic Silver so they'd look painted (they are painted on the real deal). I used Alclad II Pale Gold to pick out the Replicas and Miniatures bolts on them, then applied a heavy wash of Testors Rubber around the bolts and to the edges at the bottoms of the cam covers. Since I used lacquer to do the silver parts, I could literally soak them in the wash if I wanted, then use a brush soaked in thinner to mop up excess. I did soak up a little excess like that, but didn't soak them down first. The point is that with lacquers, you can experiment a little because the less-aggressive thinners for enamels generally won't hurt them.

The cowl and rubber weatherstrips are a different story. You can probably guess by now how I did the mirrors and battery, but the other parts were actually painted differently. Since I routinely put some kind of protectant on the cowl, I wanted a glossier appearance on it. The mirrors take a lot of bug hits and they have a texture, so I wanted them just flat black, but the cowl was shot with Model Master Aircraft Interior Black. I thinned it a little more than normal, shot three coats, and very carefully applied an extremely light wash of flat black to the vent holes in it. When it was all dry, I actually went over the cowl with Novus #1 to bring out a little sheen. That also rubbed the Model Master paint right off the windshield washers, leaving them body-color, which was gloss black...perfect even though it wasn't intentional. The weatherstrip was shot with a 50/50 mix of Model Master Aircraft Interior Black and Engine Gray. No drybrushes or washes here; the contrast between the dark gray and the stark black of the body is enough to carry the effect off.

I put this article together from a series of posts by Frank Kokosza. While (as Frank mentions) the featured model isn't a drag racer, Frank
provides us with a wealth of information pertaining to accomplishing realism using finishes ranging from model enamels to pastels to
Prismacolor pencils. All of Frank's techniques can (and should) be applied to your next drag racing subject to set it apart from the
crowd--Dan