Brick Ruins in Resin

This set from Tactical Conflict Systems comprises seven pieces of terrain:

• A brick "wall corner," roughly 3" x 2" (sides of the corner) x 1" (height), with close-fitting base of broken bricks, ash heaps, and other debris
• A brick-with-plastic wall corner, roughly 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" (sides of the corner) x 1" (height), with base of ash and debris
• A "zig zag" brick wall, the base measuring about 6" long by 2 1/2" wide, with height of the wall being 3/4". The base is heavily littered with debris, including pieces of fallen wall, and one-third of the base is a "bits of bricks" debris field
• A long thin wall section, 4 1/2" long x 3/4" wide x 3/4 high, with the wall being broken by window openings and sloping at each base end
• A similar piece, same dimensions, but even less wall (there is a 3/4" wall piece on one end, a door opening in the middle, and a 1/2" tall wall piece on the other end)
• A brick corner piece, but one corner side is almost entirely ruined, and the other side is just a triangle of bricks (with plaster), standing on a wide 1 1/2" x 2 1/2" base of heaped mud and rubble
• Two small brick wall sections, roughly 1/2" high, on a tight-fitting 1" x 2" base

Each of these pieces has a lot of character, with wide variety in the nature of the battle damage, the nature of the bases, and the tattered state of the brick walls.

Preparation

The nature of the molding process seems to leave a tiny lip of resin on the edges of the bases. It takes no time at all to clean these up with a hobby knife. I then chose to prime the resin with a spray of inexpensive white enamel paint.

(I've never quite known what to do with the bottoms of resin terrain. In this case, I chose to paint them black, then coat them with a clear gloss to protect against scratches. I guess you could leave them unpainted, so maybe I'm being anal here...)

Painting

I decided to go with a "red brick" look, even though I realize many other colors of brick are used in the modern world. I didn't have a red paint which was red-brick enough, and I didn't feel like mixing up a color, so I decided to use the closest color I had (a deep "tapestry wine" purplish red) and correct with washes later. (Yes, I was being lazy.)

I applied a heavy wash of the tapestry red, with the idea being that the wash would be fluid enough to run into the lines between the bricks and bring out the detail. Well, the wash didn't turn out well. I had trouble getting the color to settle into the lines between the bricks, and the "washed out" color looked too pink when dry.

To correct the problem, I tried using a heavy brown wash on one of the pieces - my thinking being to use the brown both to tone down the pink and to get it into the bricks for contrast. That didn't work either, as I didn't like the final color and I didn't get the contrast I was looking for. And even worse, parts of the original red wash came off as I painted over them, leaving ugly white blotches.

(And it was at this point when a kitbitzer chimed in: "why are you making the walls so pink?")

In frustration, I decided to paint the whole thing over. I'd cover it up with black, which I knew would give me the contrast between the bricks, then drybrush the brick color on.

And then a wonderful thing happened. As I began to paint over the walls with black paint, I noticed that I was getting this great "fire blackened" look to all of the ruin pieces. Depending on how strong I applied the black, I could get any effect I wanted on the walls - from overall sooty (heavy black) to ash-grey (light wash, black only in the cracks). Painting each side of a wall differently gave the appearance that a terrible fire had burned on a particular side of the wall.

To my surprise, I also found that the black worked great on the bases, bringing out detail while leaving them in a black-and-white starkness that worked great for debris.

Well, well! Serendipity. All there was left was to do some touch-up (correcting areas where the red wash had stained too much of the ground, or where a few bricks were "too white"), then spray a protective matte clear coat.