Painting Bricks and Mortar
MrZaremba
I tried painting a brick building structure yesterday for the first time. I
painted the overall structure a red oxide. To paint the mortar, I mixed some
water with light gray water-based paint and let it run in between the cracks
and sponged off the excess. Once the water evaporated, it left a nice looking
mortared appearance, but the rest of the building looked like it was coated
with flour. I tried drybrushing the faces of the bricks with the original
color, but the mortar filled back in with the original color, leaving me right
back where I started!
Anyone have any suggestions on a better way to go about painting mortar?
Thanks,
Milo
Wolf Kirchmeir
=>Anyone have any suggestions on a better way to go about painting mortar?
First off, don't expect to see the every mortar line. You don't in real life,
especially not from the viewing distance that corresponds to the HO distance
from which we see the models (200-300' and more, usually.) All you want is
enough (subtle) contrast to give the brick wall some texture - your eyes and
brain will fool you into thinking the all the mortar lines are visible.
Second, most mortar is not very light compared to the brick, and it weathers
dark pretty quickly, especially next to railroad tracks, where smoke
(including diesel smoke) settles into the mortar lines and darkens them. I
use a medium _dark_ grey warmed up with a bit of orange or yellow. Less
contrast usuallly looks more realistic. There are exceptions - I've seen a
brick building painted red with the mortar lines picked out in white paint -
very garish, and it made the building look like a construction paper model.
:-)
Thirdly, don't sponge off the excess. You actually spread some of the paint
onto the surface of the brick (as you found out.) Also, use _very thin_
washes, and try two or three of them. Tilt the brick wall so the excess wash
runs off at the bottom, use a paper towel edge to draw off that excess. Then
lay the wall flat, and let it dry. Mortar lines will dry a little lighter
than tne brick.
Fourthly, dry brush streaks from gutters, window ledges, etc to show both the
effects of rain and chemistry - eg, some light streaks from concrete window
ledges, some darker streaks where rain water from roofs and gutters splashes
onto the wall. If the window frames are iron, you'll see rusty streaks on the
window ledges, too. Etc. Take a few pictures of nicely weathered buildings
for reference. Note that some buildings develop a patchy whitish bloom from
the reaction of rainwater with the lime in the mortar.
Finally, collect a number of different reds and browns etc for brick colour,
and vary the mortar colours, too. Painting brick is one of the most enjoyable
aspects of building construction IMO. Lots of variation possible.
BTW, I use acrylics exclusively for this work. They thin very well with
poridnary tap watre, but some people insist on distilled water. Use thsoe
cheap craft paints.
HTH&GL
--
Wolf Kirchmeir
Blind River, Ontario, Canada
Never try to teach a pig to dance.
It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Bruce Favinger
Use lighten shades of your colors. First spray or air brush your mortar
color. Let this dry for a day or two. Then use a flat brush to dry brush
with. Make sure that there is very little paint, almost none on the brush
and you are using a brush size that you can control. Randomly vary the
shades of your brick color just a bit. Let it all dry and then use a flat
black wash to tone it all down. You can then dry brush a very light brick
color to pick out any raised detail that you might have around windows,
doors and so on. Bruce
"MrZaremba" <mrza...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030309101505...@mb-cc.aol.com...
Frank A. Rosenbaum
printing or linoleum block printing. Paint the mortar lines, then take the
roller, and roll it in the brick color, and then on a piece of glass to
spread and reduce the amount of paint on it. Then roll it on the brick.
Do not use the foam paint rollers as they will drop into the mortar lines.
--
From the computer of
Frank A. Rosenbaum
"MrZaremba" <mrza...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030309101505...@mb-cc.aol.com...
Radford Walker
> I tried painting a brick building structure yesterday for the first time. I
> painted the overall structure a red oxide. ...
> I tried drybrushing the faces of the bricks with the original
> color, but the mortar filled back in with the original color, leaving me right
> back where I started!
That is one of the methods I use. It sounds like your drybrush wasn't
dry enough, or the paint was too thick on the brush. Else try a stiffer
brush and keep it more horizontal to the work so the ends of the brush
don't go down into the cracks.
Another method I use is, after the original base coat, I just touch the
mortar color to a few places and let capillary action pull the diluted
paint into the cracks. Often the cracks are scale way too big anyway.
This way I can highlight mortar where I want it without necessarily
doing all the mortar. There is also the random element of where the
capillary action will go. Sometimes I'll tilt a piece in a certain
direction and let gravity help the capillaries....
cat
Yep, don't bother. When you view a real structure from even a
medium distance you may see the brick texture, but you will not see
any mortar lines. When i see a beautifully detailed model complete
with mortar line detail I think "great model" but I never see it for a
moment as real. Unless this model is designed to appear VERY close to
the viewer, forget the mortar lines and concentrate on giving some
highlights to the overall brick pattern. (my way has been to take the
part to a real building and move to the apparent distance where the
model is supposed to be and mark out here the texture differences
appear on the real thing. Done properly it gives a remarkably
realistic appearance.
cat
Kennedy
I think your drybrush technique needs a bit of work! :D
I paint the entire brick face the color of the mortar, then drybrush the
face of the bricks with the red color. That's the simple statement.
In reality, I spray the entire structure black. Then slop on white in
random places all over. Then I drybrush the red onto the brick faces.
This will give you a weathered finish with at least two shades of every
color you drybrush onto the building; a dark shade over the black, a
lighter shade over the white. The white (or gray if you want to do the
mortar color) will serve as the mortar color in the seams. YOu can also
paint individual bricks in other colors, to portray discolored bricks. Or,
you can use a different shades of red on individual bricks to give the wall
some character. I usually mix those colors on the back of my hand....,
it's a great palette since it's also holding the structure....
:D
Kennedy
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MrZaremba
Thanks for your swift replies. I believe I was using the wrong kind of brush
for drybrushing the original color the second time. The hobby store was
already closed last night, but I repeated the light gray wash and then followed
it with a very light black wash as an earlier poster suggested and let the
walls dry flat. I was amazed by the result once the water evaporated. The
black and grey left tiny puddles in a random fashion, so each individual brick
face had its own slight variation of color. I loved the way the effect worked
out. The building turned out a bit grimier than I would have liked, but I
think some more drybrushing (with the proper brush and/or technique) may clean
it up a bit.
Thanks to all!
Milo
Alexandre D.
I love your idea of painting the whole thing black, then applying random spots of white. The results must be very impressive, I
can't wait to try it.
I ask for you opinion: do you think this would work in N scale ?
I've tried drybrushing bricks on one of my N scale buildings, and the "mortar" grooves are so small, they always filled up with
paint, no matter how dry was my brush ...
Thanks !!!
--
---------------
Alexandre D.
N Scaler in Montreal, Canada
alex#mrrkb.com (replace # with @)
Model Railroading KnowledgeBase
http://www.mrrkb.com
My layout: The AxD R&R
http://www.mrrkb.com/mylayouts/axdrr
See my profile:
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"Kennedy (no longer not on The Haggis!)" <howl...@YOUKNOWHAT.tir.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
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Kennedy
One of my friends used to paint 15mm and 25mm resin cast buildings for the
wargaming crowd. He always bought the better artists brushes. I used the
cheap stuff from the cheap box at the hobby shop. After going through a
ton of brushes, I finally bought a set of Windsor-Newton red sable brushes
for watercolors. The one I'm currently using, I've been using for nearly 6
years. Good quality brushes last, even if you're doing the drybush thing.
Kennedy
> Kenedy,
>
> I love your idea of painting the whole thing black, then applying random
> spots of white. The results must be very impressive, I can't wait to try
> it.
>
> I ask for you opinion: do you think this would work in N scale ?
>
> I've tried drybrushing bricks on one of my N scale buildings, and the
> "mortar" grooves are so small, they always filled up with paint, no
> matter how dry was my brush ...
>
> Thanks !!!
Should work on any scale. We've done it on 1/285th scale stuff (smaller
than Z scale), but mainly on 15mm and 25mm (this one is 1/72 scale). I've
used it on stuff as large as that big castle that Fisher Price made a few
years back; I needed a castle for my Warhammer 40K Space Marines....
The spots of white is more slathering it on randomly. Think of cleaning a
brush that's semi-dry on the building; the white will be solid in some
areas and less so in others. This will give you more shades of the final
color.
This process works best where there is a lot of detail in the walls, etc.
Like, deep grooves and such. Walls like DPM work as well, but the
technique is a bit different.
Remember, sloppier the better, you want a nicely weathered building, not a
pristine one. While we've all seen George Sellios' FSM models and their
detail of weathering, you can get something approaching that kind of
coloring reasonably easily. Besides, if you screw up, you can always
repaint it!
PS. I buy the cheapest brand of black automotive primer I can find. Which
is why this technique is called the black primer drybrush method. :D
CowGoesMoo
I use water-based paints and I've been rinsing out my brushes with soap and
water and try to re-form the point as it dries. But over time the nice point
disappears and the bristles spread out. Does anyone have suggestions for the
best way to take care of/clean brushes and extend their life?
Thanks
Kennedy
Wash the brushes as normal. Afterwards, dry them on a tissue, then run the
brush on your tongue. The saliva will form the tip back into a point, and
will dry in that position. Water will soften them up again.
Kennedy (That's my secret)
Tim O'Connor
Use a dry paper towel to clean the bricks off after the paint has
dried a bit but before it has completely hardened. Instead of
thinning the paint, try using thickened paint and squeegee it around
with a piece of balsa or plastic. This will push in into the cracks and
clean it off the brick faces at the same time.