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Any of you talented/helpful people have ideas on how to do wood grain? Specifically on something small like a Las rifle? I've tried but it's kinda tricky to get right.

Any tips would be appreciated!

I have not yet tried to duplicate a wooden look on my minis yet, so I took the time to
find some tuts that do.

http://blog.brushthralls.com/?page_id=2670

http://www.karoath.com/pages/minitips_wood.php

http://hot-lead.org/advance/texturing_wood.htm

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/28-high-resolution-wood-textures-for-designers/

The last link is a site with wood textures. I used this as a reference when texturing wood onto a
3D object without using an actual photo (so basically painting).
It really helped me at the time. I haven't fully read the tuts but I recon if you base it with a nice midtone brown
and put in several lines (one of the tuts mentioned not to manoeuvre your hand put to take your time and
move the object rather than your hand.) than wash it
and use the same colour or mixed to make a different tone.

If you don't have a wide range of browns you can mix them up with, black, white, yellow, green, red and blue.
These give nice different shades ( I wouldn't advice using all those different tones).

If you google 'wood textures' you can find a pattern that suits you and try and decide what tones you want.
Different types of wood have different types of colours and patterns. But as lovely as it sounds you can be
as creative as you want because, you can

Try a bade, drybrush (for a grainy look) and putting in lined with a darker colour, if you are afraid of making a line
water it down and do it in small strokes or one quick one (though the last one only works for a few people)

Okay I'm going to stop typing, I'm getting way to enthusiastic about it I'm just really curious about the result now.

~S.

Cheat?

http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=7394

(Photos of the result are to the Right of the article).

http://www.radubstore.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=77_117

I haven't used them on miniatures, but I have used them on scale models and it works well enough. Light color first - then darker color. They also make wood grain decals for models.

I can't manage anything convincing at that scale, either. Wood is easy enough to paint, though, if there's a grain physically modeled into the part, as it picks up washes and/or drybrushing nicely. If I want a smooth piece to be wood, I'll score a grain into it with a firm pass of coarse sandpaper or, if I want something fancier and larger scale, I'll use a square burin and engrave the part. The latter method even works on white metal, but few modelers have the tool. On plastic, however, a sewing needle or the back of a hobby knife blade could be used to scribe the lines in, as well.

I paint my gunstock beige or bleach bone color, then i use vallejo smoke and just streak it on like wood grain with an older brush.

Thanks for the responses guys, muchly appreciated. Will give a few techniques a go and see which works best. Might even post up what I have...