Painting Wooden Planks

I'm in the process of making some odds and ends such as bridges, ladders, fences, and the like. I am making them out of popsickle sticks, and they are coming out looking really good... until I paint them. How do I get them to look this good? The piece looks a rotted and rickity, which is perfect. I've been trying to drybrush mine, but they don't have enough texture. The one in the pic doesn't seem textured and it came out ok. What's the secret!?

if this look is good enough for you It is made with coffee sticks instead of popsicle sticks but it is quickly painted with heavily watered down dark brown paint acts almost like a stain wipe off the excess with a paper towel

robertrunners stain technique is a fine way to get VERY good results quickly. If you rough up the wood by drawing a course razor with the grain, you'll get greater depth to the wash & could give it a lighter dry brush. For unfinished wood, think in terms of greys & brownish greys like charcoal grey.
Looking forward to seeing how your stuff turns out.

Hmmm, good idea. Too bad all my shnazzy wooden structures are all covered in acrylic. Oh well, they are fun to make anyway! Back to the drawing board!

Well, I tried using a very watery dark brown and it came out looking pretty lame. I tried using less water. A bit better. Finally, I used a not-so-watery-but-still-diluted mix of dark brown and a little black and WOW! Its a bit darker and less colorful than the picture you showed, but I think it really makes the wood look old. Thanks a ton, guys!

I bought a $1 steel brush from the hardware store and run it over balsa wood, it looks amazing, now i just need to paint it with your techniques.

I got the steel brush idea from a train model website but i lost the link. It looked pretty amazing!

How do you think it would looks with light gray/grey highlight drybrush like nala said? Maybe more realistic than "fantasy brown" wood.

Yes spending the time to drybrush multiple coats will probably help a lot getting it more realistic. But the speed of watered down brown allows you to move to the next piece faster, while still having respectable results. Then when you have exhausted the building ideas you come back and clean up the looks with the drybrush. At least that is my general idea in building.

Ok, this is not exactly on topic, but I didn't want to throw up another topic so soon. I have got a building all built up and looking really good. The trouble is, the second storey floor that I tried to line with wooden planks looks like crap! Are there any tutorials on making good floors? I'd like to use different kinds of floor for different buildings to add variety (wooden, tiled, etc.)

For my wooden floors I use coffee stir sticks cut to random lengths and glued down with wood glue. I think it is important to not place them too close together or tightly so they look aged and weathered. I'm going to throw another picture up for you to see.
You can also see the base of the mini has a plank look as well this is done with cerealbox card board painted and then scored with a knife for the plank look.

Hmm, my group has buildings with plank floors made of balsa, popsicle sticks, coffee stirrers, and other materials. They've been assembled by several different people, and they all look quite good in my opinion. Wooden floors are one of the things which should be difficult to make look bad. Can you post a picture so that we might be able to see what specifically you are doing wrong?

I guess general tips would be:
Make the pieces of "random" lengths
If the floor is broken, have the wood broken on that edge
Fill in the cracks with black, basecoat in dark brown, drybrush in greys or light browns (OR) water down brown paint and let the natural wood grain absorb it

Basically just duplicate what robertrunner did in his above pic.

Well, I think what I did wrong was to try to slice Popsicle sticks down the middle to make them the right size. This made them all irregular and they didn't fit together very well. Also, I tried to make them all a uniform length while staggering the formation. I guess I need to work with something that is already thin enough like you guys are.