Brick colors

[Anonymous]

I am getting ready to paint a row of brick store fronts and want make them each a little different color.

What colors work good for natural brick?

[snowey]

for beige or tan brick, use aged concrete, dirt, or sand. For red brick, boxcar red, signal red and oxide red are good. And for brown brick, use rail brown.

[orsonroy]

Wander over to Hobby Lobby, or anywhere else that carries a full line of acrylic craft paints (the oes in the flip top lids) and buy one of each of the beiges and tans. Also buy a mixing pallette. Add a little of each color into each pallette cup, arm yourself with a natural fiber brush (fairly wide) and start dipping and painting. "Common brick" is generally made of local clays, and varies widely in color for each building. Mixing up the paints will give you a randomness and realism to the sides and backs of your brick buildings. For the fronts, use "brick red", deep burgundys or dark browns, as the fronts of buildings generally used more expensive bricks.

[davekelly]

I just finished painting Walther's Merchant Row 1 and 2. I used 2 main colors. Rust and Oxcide Red. To those colors I added some yellow or signal red to vary the colors between each building. The differences are slight, but noticeable. Kalmbach's "Urban Scenery" is an excellent source of ideas, including painting brick.

[RoyalOaker]

QUOTE: Originally posted by davekelly

I just finished painting Walther's Merchant Row 1 and 2. I used 2 main colors. Rust and Oxcide Red. To those colors I added some yellow or signal red to vary the colors between each building. The differences are slight, but noticeable. Kalmbach's "Urban Scenery" is an excellent source of ideas, including painting brick.

Ha,

I just painted those also. I used colors like dark brown to red to beige. I think they turned out great.

The city I live in, Royal Oak, has many buildings that are very similar to the merchant's rows by Walthers. The colors I see on the actual buildings are shades of Red, Shades of Browns, Shades of white/beige. I even see some bricks painted blue.

I don't think you can go wrong, just be sure that you use a dull coat or a flat paint because bricks don't shine.

[cacole]

Another source of cheap paint is Wal-mart -- look in the crafts area for Apple brand acrylic paints.

[Anonymous]

I like the paints from the craft stores for buildings. Frequently, I mix a few drops of yellow or beige to the reds to get a little variation. Another good trick, but a little time cionsumming, is to take a lighter shades and paint some individual bricks so the wall is not all the same color. Only do the sides visible to the aisle as this does take a little time.

[Anonymous]

The only thing you have to watch out for with craft paints, is that they can fill in some of the detail. You can also use gray and black to tone down a color and white to lighten it. Remember that distance is also scaled down. Most buildings colors lighten as you get further away from them.
For some variations in brick color on a wall, try altering the base color a bit and use a dry bru***echnique (wipe most of the paint out) lightly brush some areas at random. And guys you might find that your wifes little wedge shaped makeup sponges work well for this too. Just be sure to ask for one, or they can be found in the makeup section and are cheap.

[snowey]

QUOTE: Originally posted by davekelly

I just finished painting Walther's Merchant Row 1 and 2. I used 2 main colors. Rust and Oxcide Red. To those colors I added some yellow or signal red to vary the colors between each building. The differences are slight, but noticeable. Kalmbach's "Urban Scenery" is an excellent source of ideas, including painting brick.

I think the book is Kalmbachs "Building City Scenery".

[davekelly]

Snowey,

Yeah that's it. Great book filled with fantastic ideas.

[Anonymous]

Any ideas on how to put mortar between the bricks? I have tried several ways and none were very successful. Thanks
Bill

[ericboone]

In the December 2001 issue of MR there was an article about printing your own decals from photographs for bricks. The results were amazing. The article was written by a member of the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society and I think they have a section on their web page about it, but you must pay to access it. http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/

[jfrank138]

"Any ideas on how to put mortar between the bricks? I have tried several ways and none were very successful."

This works for me: Paint the bricks first. Give it a day or two to dry completely. Then paint the mortar color, thinning the paint a bit, and wipe off immediately. The mortar color will remain in the recesses between the bricks.

[davekelly]

"Building City Scenery" has a great section on painting mortar. What works for me is acyrlic paint massively thinned out with alcohol (evalperates quicker). Flows right into the mortar. It sometimes takes a couple applications, but works for me.

[RappleNH]

There is a product specifically made to create mortar between the bricks on your buildings. It is called Robert's Brick Mortar Formula, sold by Robert's Products Co. PO Box 27057 Milwaukee WI 53227. It was reviewed in Model Railroad News way back in June 1998. Water based, it is a wipe on, let dry, wipe off the excess type product. It can be tinted with india ink to create shadings in the mortar.

[davekelly]

Rapple,

I've heard of that stuff. How easy is it to use? Does it take some of the underlying paint with it when you wipe it off?

[snowey]

the afore mentioned Kalmbach book "Building City Scenery" has some GREAT methods for making mortar.
Another method that I've heard about, but never tried, is to start by painting the brick surface black, let it dry completly, then paint on the brick color, let that dry completly, then brush on some white or off-white paint, (or whatever color you want your mortar to be) let it dry, then lightly sand the brick surface.
Also, another method is to paint the brick surface Concret or Aged Concrete, let it dry, then "drybrush" the brick color on. This only works with red or brown brick, though. ("drybrush" means, dip a brush in paint, wipe off as much as you can on a rag, paper towel, napkin, etc., then "drag" it across the surface. It'll take 3 or 4 trys before you start to notice anything, so you might want to practice it on cardboard or something first).

Also, another Kalmbach book "Painting and Deataling for Model Railroaders" has a good method for painting mortar.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help. I'll give it a try and see what happens.[8D][:D][:)]

[Anonymous]

Someone asked how to put mortar color in bricks. I use these same acrylic paints and mix them with alcohol. Making a thin wash. Using a limp bru***o hold the paint, brush it on the surface. Letting the capillary action work the wash into the cracks. The alcohol lets it dry fast and the resulting wash gives a nice weathering results. Use white , beige brown, black or gray for colors. This tecnique can also be used for many other types of weathering.

[orsonroy]

I almost never add mortar to my HO or N buildings. The mortar lines on almost all models are almost 3 times as large as they should be, which adds too much white to the building. In almost every kit I've seen where someone added mortar, the bricks look too washed out and chalky to be realistic.

[davekelly]

orsonroy,

Good point about the size of mortar. It can look very non realistic when you see more of the mortar than the brick. It seems especially noticeable with darker brick and very white mortar. I do think, however, that people expect to see mortar when they see a brick building. When I add mortar I massively thin the color with alchohol and only apply enough so that you can see about 30 percent of the building side has visiable mortar lines. This seems to trick the brain into assuming that all the mortar lines are painted. That there are no really visable mortar lines over the majority of the wall (the highly thinned mortar does go into all the lines, but can't really be seen unless one gets really really really close) tells the brain that the wall doesn't look like a bunch of white lines with red between them. Although it looked odd to me when I first did it (probably because I "saw" no mortar over a bunch of the wall), most viewers seem to like the result.

The other trick I use is to not paint mortar at all on any structure that will be more than 2 feet from the edge of the layout. If you drive around an area with lots of brick buildings you'll notice that buildings more than 100 or so feet away have mortar, you just can't see it at that distance.

[Anonymous]

In my buildings Ive been very impressed with Floquill's Poly scale paints using my Paasche H or Acrylic / Watercolor brushes. The colors the military modelers have work great too. There are lots of Grays & Greens I like to use for my windows & Doors. Concrete trim can be sandy colors instead of stark grays. Vary the colors by mixing in light or dark tones.
Mortar color on some of the smaller layout size buildings in Chicago have reds or Terra Cotta colors in the mix and used on the face brick. When viewed it makes the mortar blend into the brick . For realism, paint the sides and back walls with a common brick color. This is close to a pastel peach with some pastel orange and reds thrown in for randomness.

[mrunyan]

It sounds to me like the thin alcohol mortar application (a nice idea!) if done only once or twice so it's slight would not seem too white when up close and not really visible when further away.
Also I would add that the craft acrylics go on really thick. It takes me several coats to hide the base plastic without brush strokes showing thru. So I would recommend using the usual hobbySHOP paints with an airbru***o get good base coat coverage and still be thin enough not to hide detail. Then go in with here and there with different hues. The additional colors could certainly be the cheaper hobby craft paints.

[Anonymous]

I used mostly Floquil paints on mine, tones of gray, tan, red, creme, etc.

[Anonymous]

I've used a white wash made from inexpesive craft acrylics.just experiment with them.A sqiggle of white to about three tablespoons of water and a spoon of alcohol makes a wash, then basically let it flow into mortar lines.A little goes a long way,you just want tobring the mortar out slightly.Let that dry,at least an hour or aday if you like,then use a color that you like,try those make up applicators,you can get about fifty for a couple of bucks,then dab your color back on the bricks only. I've used reds,browns and oranges they all work well.When that's dry, give a wash of india ink and alcohol.I buy a pint of alcohol and add two teaspoons of india ink to it and use it on everything. Remember that newer brick has more mortar showing, a lot of older buildings the mortar's dirty.Use a little more black wash.Work with a little color at a time.Check the building in your area, you'll see they're many shades.

[Anonymous]

I wi***o thank you all for giving me some good sound advice.

I have been practicing on scrap material, and achieving good results.

Next I paint Merchants Row I.