Modelling Brick Walls
Almost any railway scene is going to contain at least one building, and it's pretty likely it will have some brick walls. But brick walls are not the easiest things to model realistically.
Many modellers include card models for buildings, and these generally have the brick walls printed fairly well, but without any surface texture. Personally I find this too much of a distraction, and will always use textured surfaces, which usually means plastic models. Kits of buildings with brick walls have an appropriate surface moulded in, and for scratch building there is embossed plastikard available.
These surfaces provide the contours for brick and mortar, but they are of a plain, semi gloss colour which looks entirely wrong. Our aim is to achieve a realistic brick wall appearance, including variations in brick colour and mortar lines. The method I have used is fairly simple, but rather time consuming.
The first step is to establish an approximate colour. If using "brick red" coloured plastic this is not entirely necessary, but from a grey plastic base I apply a good coat of brick red enamel with an airbrush. Onto this surface I next apply the colour variation of the bricks. To get an idea of this it is worth while photographing some representative brick walls. These should be of the correct era for what you are modelling.
Now comes the laborious part. Using a fine brush, I paint individual bricks at random in a variety of colours. These can range from white through to black, and include various shades of brown. At this stage what I am doing looks entirely wrong - the colours are far too bold. But that is exactly the point. Any paint applied this way will appear strong and bold, which is not the effect required.
When the wall has reached the point of appearing to be suffering a severe skin complaint, the next step is to soften this down to a more appropriate level. This is actually very easily achieved by spraying on a thin, and hence translucent, coat of brick red enamel. This has to be done with an airbrush to get the thickness right.
Once I am happy with the colouration of the brick, I set about applying the mortar. To do this the wall must be laid horizontal. I then take a mixture of stone and white enamel paints to obtain the correct mortar colour, and thin them with roughly 3 parts thinner to one part paint. Using a fine brush I apply a drop of this into a corner of the mortar line, as accurately as possible into the recess. The paint is so thin that capillary action carries it along the recess to follow and fill the mortar lines.
It almost always happens that some of the mortar paint sits on the brick faces. This can be wiped off with a tissue before it dries, but not too soon or you will draw it out of the lines. It sometimes helps to very lightly moisten the tissue with thinners or white spirit.
Now the wall must be weathered according to its age and location. For this I use the Carrs weathering powders, applied with a brush then dusted off by blowing on the model. Finally I fix the weathering with an airbrushed coat of matt varnish.
