painting and weathering brick building kits

[Anonymous]

I have a few kits of brick buildings, and am stymied by how to convincingly paint and weather the brick sides. OK, these are not super kits, just Walthers and Pola. The bricks are not convincing by themselves, so I added a wash of diluted Concrete color. Well, that sunk into the cracks to provide "mortar" but lightened up the sides, I was unable to totally wipe the paint off the surface of the bricks and leave it inbetween to represent mortar. What do you guys do?
Or, will later weathering make this no problem? I have no airbrush or money for one, so we need to consider brush paint or chalk. (or a spray can).
Oh, the buildings are a roundhouse, engine house (used as a car shop) and Merchants Row 1, if that helps. Other merchant shops to be added later.
Dean

[Anonymous]

Ok i got this out of Railroad Model Craftsman July 2000, so please bear with me. I'll try to condense if i can.

Wa***he walls in water with a little liquid detergent, let them air dry, and then paint them your choice for the base brick color (article suggests Pactra Terra Cotta or a 70:30 mix of Floquil Zinc chromate and reefer white).

Second step is tedious but gives the brick walls character. Mix your base color with a lighter color, beige, light gray, or white, approximately 50:50 original color to tinting color, and randomly paint about 20% of the bricks. You can create "clinkers" or bricks that have been scorched in the firing process by repeating the second step but substitute black with your base color. Again be random and the exact ratio of paint mixture isn't critical.

The article states the third step is to paint the grout and weathering in one step. You already have but if you repainted your brick wall you should be good to go. Purchase the least expensive brand possible of artist water colors at any art supply store. He recommends lamp black, chinese white, and Van *** brown. You'll also need a soft number 3 paint brush. Work water into the crevices by continuing to move your brush over the wall. This breaks down the surface tension and allows the wall to be uniformly wet. Do not use "wet water", water with detergent added. Use a plastic coffee can lid for a palette (or whatever you have that's suitable) and place a small dab of each of the colors on it for mixing. Start with a little white and brown and apply this to the wall. Then introduce a little black. To keep the colors fresh, stop occasionally and clean the brush. You don't want to be too uniform. After I have laid down somewhat of a base coat, I'll go in at a spot and put on a "direct hit" of white to represent efflorescence, the chemical reaction to the salts in the brick or grout. I also use this same technique with black or brown under eaves, sills, or occasionally on the wall to represent soot or grime.

The author states when the watercolor dries you may need to redo it due to the colors slightly changing during the drying process. He suggests heavy grime for machine shops and Row houses in the working class district. Upper class housing should be cleaner overall. To lighten the weathering, wipe a paper towel over the top of the bricks to remove some of the water color, leaving paint just in the joints and crevices to yield newer looking walls.

He later suggests if you want to further weather you can do so using pastels to represent soot or rust. He also added some vines by drawing the vines on the wall with white glue and then sprinkling ground foam on the wet glue tracery.

If you have a chance to pick up the back issue the pictures of his very simple work are very realistic looking. All credit here is due to Bob Brendle. He's the one who wrote the article.

[Anonymous]

One consideration,dull coat spray application & pastel powered chalks.
Before the dull coat dries, I would grind/file down the chalk into powder form and blow the chalk across
the bldg.
Not very scientific,but cheap.

[Anonymous]

I vary my techniques somewhat, depending on whether I'm working with plastic, plaster, or resin castings, but here's the basics of what I do for brickwork:

1. Using Floquil or Polly S Earth and/or Aged Concrete and a 3/0 sable brush, flow paint into the mortar joints. Your brush doesn't have to be fully loaded, and in fact you don't want to "flood" the mortar lines anyway. Use thin paint and let capillary action do the rest.

2. After everything has dried, I use Plaid or Apple Barrel acrylic "Indian Red" (available at WalMart for about 78 cents) and a No. 4 flat sable bru***o paint the surface of the bricks. I let the brush just skim along the surface, almost like dry brushing, except the brush really isn't dry. A steady hand and very little pressure on the brush will keep the brick color on the brick and out of the mortar lines.

After the bricks have dried, I sometimes go over individual bricks with a dark orange or black or raw sienna. I don't paint a lot of bricks like this because on a model it's easy to overdo. And I always use an illuminated magnifier to help make sure the paint doesn't run into the mortar.

I've used my method for many years with great results! It works well enough to withstand scrutiny in closeup photos.

And here's another tip: if you ever need to color stone walls that have been modeled in plaster, try Woodland Scenics scenery pigments. They work great on plaster walls (of course they were designed to be used on plaster castings, so it's no surprise). I used them on a Southriver Modelworks kit where 2/3's of the structure was stone; the results were the most realistic I've ever achieved!

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dean, I always liked to use a white or light gray water based paint to wash on the mortar color. The reason being that you can renove that "haze" from the bricks with a damp paper towel. Solvent based paints attack the platic and make that "haze" almost impossible to remove. Polly S paints work well for this as they are latex/water based. Then I vary the brick color like some others have already described...Vic