 matthew wrote: |
| Hi, I was wondering how you guys paint your buildings. im looking for any suggestions. thanks |
|
Hey Matt, hope ya got DSL, cuz I'm gonna throw some photos at ya...I took these on a recent trip to Marburg and Nuremburg, Germany. They were very helpful in painting the church in my 1/72 dio in the last photos. First, the photos...
1. The old bombed-out hospital walls of Marburg: note the varied colors of the stone...the brick in the tan stone...
2. The Lutheran church in Marburg: note the varying shades and pinkish hues...yup that's me!
3. A good shot of the Kaiserburg castle in Nurnberg, showing a variety of shades of stones, bricks, cobblestones, etc...
4. The castle walls, Nurnberg; again, the many hues...
5. ...and my dio w/ the church...note the similarity to the photos of the stones...a lot of work, but well worth the effort...
Now, how I did it...what I do is to start with a base coat of tan; it doesn't matter exact shade; I use craft store paints that come in a bewildering variety of shades for next to nothing : after that dries, I get a plastic palette--save the tops of anything like coffee tins that close with plastic tops--and I squeeze out about a dozen dollops of different shades that I'll need: tan, brick red, several grays, white (for lightening) and black, dark browns, etc. I combine all kinds of different shades in almost halphazard combinations, never worrying about uniformity of any shade,,,I literally painted every different brick that you see; there's just not another way to do it. i used the photos for reference, matching hues as best as I could.
When the whole thing looked good, then I wash it with a light tan oil wash, to settle in betweeen the bricks as mortar. I apply it over everything, then wipe it quickly off; it makes a great old-n-dusty look to the stone. Then, I go back and repaint about 30% of the stones to accentuate them a bit, to prevent drabness; again, I don't worry about matching the shades too closely, sometimes even painting a pink hue over a gray stone if the distribution of color calls for it, ie, if it looks like there's too many "grays" in a given area.I also then washed the walltops and the window frames with burnt umber. Lastly, I used black/gray pastels to blacken in smoke/soot stains.
The best tip I can give is to BE PATIENT! Paint it over the course of a few nights if necessary...I hope you get inspired, and hope this helped!