Corrugated Metal

Tonight was a big night of miscelaneous work.  I moved the windows forward on Uncle Paul's, but before I did I started doing some tests on some Rusty Stumps Corrugated metal siding: http://www.rustystumps.com/.  I have wanted to make some models in corrugated metal, and use it in a few places--but wanted to do so in a way that did not involve making the entire structure a mess of rust!

 You can see the original siding on the left.  One thing I was not prepared for was that the corrugations were not quite aligned with the sheet-so, in the future, I will have to adjust the cut.  I cut my sample pieces to 4'x10'.  Not sure if that size is accurate for old structures, but it is a common modern size--on my own home I used sheets of 4'x20' cold rolled corrugated.  Needless to say, I have a good example of how corrugated ages.

 I hit the surface of the metal with abrasive grit--though, I am frustrated by the distortion--corrugated tends to stay straight. All the same, the grit took the shine off the aluminum, and gave the material tooth to accept a water color wash.

 It also gave it more of a sparkly/dusty look, appropriate to zinc galvanizing.

So far, so good.  Though I want to see if I can do this without so much distortion.  I weathered the bottom heavily with acrylic--as if water splash up had corroded the bottom.  That was done with ink, burnt sienna, and raw umber.  The holes were picked with a needle.