One of the things I'm happy with in my Breguet 14 is the wood. So I thought I'd make a "technical" thread.

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Nothing extraordinary but good enough, so I'll share the technique and invite other people to give theirs so we can compare and help each other improve.

I'll describe the way I made the prop hub. Here goes:


  1. Create a solid brown rectangle, and stripe it at a very slight angle with a yellowish colour, which gives the base colours for the wood.
  2. Duplicate the layer, lower luminosity until it is completely black. You now have the same shape, but entirely black.
  3. Add some noise to it. Add a motion blur at the same angle you painted the yellow stripes. Play with the settings until you're satisfied with the looks of it. You might need to erase what's standing out of the original rectangle.
  4. Set the layer mode to "soft light" or any other mode you think is OK. Lower opacity. Experiment until you're satisfied with the results.
  5. Merge with the initial layer.
  6. As for the rounded shape of the hub, I used yellowish highlighting on top and brownish shading below. The highlight about 2/3 up is white.


As I said, this is not perfect, nor is it the best/only way to do it, but it's relatively simple and satisfying.

As a side note, there is also a free program called Wood Workshop which can generate wood with knots and other stuff for you. You might want to try it out.

Now, let's hear about other peoples techniques!