brick buildings to look real

[jcholt]

how do you make brick buildings look real, so brick and mortor are correct?

[blownout cylinder]

I be using any kind of white/grey chalk/pastel. Brush it on then wipe off the excess. A thin wash made with same colours works as well.

As well, I'd suggest going around and observing how the brick actually does look around the area you're in.

Some brickwork is covered in plaster/stucco material for example

Or painted over--

There really is/are a lot of different ways to make building structures look realistic

Experiment and have some fun discovering new methods----and take pix of your progress!

[NittanyLion]

 Drive around and look at buildings.  Like I have a building I've painted a sand color in an effort to duplicate a lighter brick.  Books say I should use a black for mortar but I didn't like how it looked.  So today when I was out, I kept my eye out for buildings of the same color.  I noticed most of them did have black or dark mortar, but one that looked closer to what I was after actualy was a brown.  So like I said, look at the real deal.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

 I use 'Country gray' acrylic paint in a squeeze bottle that I get at Wal-Mart. I squeeze a little out onto my finger then rub it into the mortar lines. I then buff the area with a piece of paper towel to remove the paint from the surface of the bricks.

[DJO]

jeffrey-wimberly

 I use 'Country gray' acrylic paint in a squeeze bottle that I get at Wal-Mart. I squeeze a little out onto my finger then rub it into the mortar lines. I then buff the area with a piece of paper towel to remove the paint from the surface of the bricks.

i like that idea.  goin to try that on my walters dpm buldings

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Here's a wall I did using the method I described.

[0-6-0]

Hello I used aged concrete for the mortar lines. And when it dried I took a tuscan red pencil and rubbed it on the face of the brick to get a darker color. Then a light coat of dull coat to seal it. You can use different color pencils to get it closer to the color you want. The stock brick looks to cherry red for what I wanted . Hope this helps Frank

here are some shots of my rh

[Graffen]

An easy way to make the mortar is to just paint all over the brick-color with Polly Scale "Dust" and letting it "pool" in the grooves, try it you´ll like it.

[NellsChoo]

I've been trying to figure that one out myself.  It seems an easier chore in larger scales.  I am into N, and so far it seems certain brick building kits just don't have deep enough morter lines for many techniques to work.

What I have been doing is apply the brick color, then dust on a light gray pastel I bought.  I then rub the bricks with my fingers, wiping off most of the powder from the surface.  So far, this is the only thing that has worked for me.  I am hoping in the future I will meet a brick kit or two with real good, deep morter lines so I can try some of the techniques mentioned above.

JD

[G Paine]

For red brick I use Rustolium metal primer, there are a few other colors; a buff color is good fro yellow brick.

For the mortar lines, I use an acrylic spackle (I'm away from home, do not remenber the exact brand). I trowel it on to the brick with a small screwdriver (a palet knife would probably work also). let it dry overnight, and wipe the excess off with a damp paper towel. It is a bit more time consuming than some other methods, but I like the result much better

[nbrodar]

 I use craft paint...

Sometimes I paint the brick a "brick" color first, then rub the paint in and wipe off:

This is CreamCoat Maple Sugar Tan on an unpainted Walthers kits:

Or spray with the mortar color first, then color the brick:

Watercolor markers:

Colored pencils:

Drybrushed craft paint:

Nick

[IVRW]

Completely paint the building gray and wipe away most of the paint before it dries. the paint that stays will be in between the bricks and will give you what you want.

[tedski]

Tried a lot of techniques and had some luck painting the brick wall first and then rubbing plastic wood into the mortar lines with my thumb.  It went in easily and it was easy to wipe away the excess.  I have to echo was others have said about going out and looking at real brick buildings.  I had this notion in my head of how they should look and it was too perfect - red brick with perfect light mortar lines.  I could never really achieve this and then saw that this was not really what they looked like.  The too perfect look was actually more toy-like anyway, which is not what you're trying to achieve.  So what you may be judging to be a messed up wall may be just fine or even excellent.  The other thing I experienced is that when coloring brick walls I learned to stop when I started to feel frustrated with the appearance and come back the next day and look at it again.  Usually, it didn't look nearly as bad as I thought and I could see what needed to be done next - my frustration was making it look bad.  Found this to be true of modeling in general. 

[DJO]

somebody just gave me a box of ink botles thats used on comptuer printers cartrdges. one botle says black but the 3 others got no lables. looks one is red and other is green.   could the black work on ho bricks? 

[chutton01]

The most recent Walther's Flyer has a blurb on finishing brick walls, to summarize:
1) Prime (w/ auto body primer) and then paint the brick walls your chosen base brick color
2) I think they used spackle for the morter, and then wipe it off
3) detail individual bricks w/ colored pencils

The resulting walls looked pretty good.

BTW, I don't remember when Walthers starting putting such step-by-step articles on finishing in their flyers - I recall 'articles' about industries and car types for years, but ones about finishing and kit building - anyway, this brick one and the one before on rust spots on steel beams were actually pretty good. Before that, the concrete one...eh, I didn't think the resuls looked that good but still they tried.

[steamage]

I airbrushed the brick with Floquil Rust and used a wash of water based light gray to fill in the mortar lines.

 

[DJO]

steamage

I airbrushed the brick with Floquil Rust and used a wash of water based light gray to fill in the mortar lines.

 

tryin to glue a dpm kit that lookslike this one. do you all use special kind of small jigs that holds corners together right.    clamps i got wont hold wall corners.  

[Phoebe Vet]

I use this:

http://www.micromark.com/MAGNETIC-GLUING-JIG-10-1and4-SQUARE,7038.html