"Painted brick effect?" Topic

Hi, just wondering if anyone has every painted a building that does not have bricks sculpted into it, in such a way to make it look like it is a red brick building?

In effect…a way to represent a brick effect just using paint! I have some 10mm city buildings by blotz that I am going to use as ACW city buildings and I like the red brick look….but am unsure how to do it!

Following. Please show pics so we can evaluate the effects.
A simple observation is that the smaller the scale, the easier it is to pull off convincingly.

Base paint your mortar color.
Then use a brick template---there are many online that are not too much in cost.

I advise using a blending type of painting as I have never had much luck with spraying over a template.
To be more clear, put the template in place and use a small sponge that when loaded with paint is a bit on the dry side

I am a railway modeller ( British N gauge) as well as wargamer and once drove myself insane by trying to paint brick pattern onto plain card. I started by scoring lines into the card at scale distance for brick height. That in itself moved my sanity to a critical level. I then painted the whole sheet mortar colour and finally tried to put dabs of paint at the correct spacing for bricks.
I do not recommend it, unless you are modelling in 1/32 or above. I ended up buying sheets of brick paper to cover the card.

Thanks for the advice so far. I'll have to Google the brick template thing! I'm guessing it's a brass etched thingy?

Smallest stencil I've found so far is 1:48…so too big…will keep looking…

In smaller scale it works out fine just to make rather random blotches of brick colors see:
link

IIRC 10mm is roughly equal to N scale in model railroading. Is it possible to find brick buildings in that scale that suit your purpose?

If you have an existing smooth sided building and you want to make it look like it is made of brick, you could try drawing the brick on using an extremely sharp pencil and a straight edge. Another trick is because bricks are not quite uniform in color you could paint random brick shapes slightly different colors as DyeHard has done.

Different brick finishes

link

Many thanks for the ideas so far !!

DyeHard that is a really nice effect you have going on there.

I try to do it freehand. But I need to go slowly, or it won't look nice.

I chat find any type of template smaller than 1/42..and I imagine it would be hard to make anything approaching 1/72 or 1/100
I'm wondering if it's possible to make a rubber stamp or something similar.

Some hobby stores for model railroaders will sell sheet styrene that is embossed with brick patterns. You could try making stamps out of that. If so I would recommend using HO scale, because at N scale or 1:160 a brick would be about .5mm tall by slightly over 1mm long.

At that scale, I'd used brick paper. Been using it in model railroader for years and it look better than anything you can paint.

Good advice all. I am being a bit radical as will be using the 10mm buildings with 15mm figures, so I'm happy to use slighter larger bricks! I'm beginning too think that this could be tricky :)

Listen to steamingdave, he knows whereof he speaks. I, too, am a long time N scale model railroader and I wouldn't dream of trying to "paint" a brick pattern in this scale. Bill N gives best option – either brick paper or thin plastic brick. Just cut it to match to the sides of your buildings and cut out for window and door openings. The real challenge will be how to handle the outer corners (inner corners less so). Do your best to patch the patter – or with the paper wrap it around as best you can.