orsonroy,
Good point about the size of mortar. It can look very non realistic when you see more of the mortar than the brick. It seems especially noticeable with darker brick and very white mortar. I do think, however, that people expect to see mortar when they see a brick building. When I add mortar I massively thin the color with alchohol and only apply enough so that you can see about 30 percent of the building side has visiable mortar lines. This seems to trick the brain into assuming that all the mortar lines are painted. That there are no really visable mortar lines over the majority of the wall (the highly thinned mortar does go into all the lines, but can’t really be seen unless one gets really really really close) tells the brain that the wall doesn’t look like a bunch of white lines with red between them. Although it looked odd to me when I first did it (probably because I “saw” no mortar over a bunch of the wall), most viewers seem to like the result.
The other trick I use is to not paint mortar at all on any structure that will be more than 2 feet from the edge of the layout. If you drive around an area with lots of brick buildings you’ll notice that buildings more than 100 or so feet away have mortar, you just can’t see it at that distance.
In my buildings Ive been very impressed with Floquill’s Poly scale paints using my Paasche H or Acrylic / Watercolor brushes. The colors the military modelers have work great too. There are lots of Grays & Greens I like to use for my windows & Doors. Concrete trim can be sandy colors instead of stark grays. Vary the colors by mixing in light or dark tones.
Mortar color on some of the smaller layout size buildings in Chicago have reds or Terra Cotta colors in the mix and used on the face brick. When viewed it makes the mortar blend into the brick . For realism, paint the sides and back walls with a common brick color. This is close to a pastel peach with some pastel orange and reds thrown in for randomness.
It sounds to me like the thin alcohol mortar application (a nice idea!) if done only once or twice so it’s slight would not seem too white when up close and not really visible when further away.
Also I would add that the craft acrylics go on really thick. It takes me several coats to hide the base plastic without brush strokes showing thru. So I would recommend using the usual hobbySHOP paints with an airbru***o get good base coat coverage and still be thin enough not to hide detail. Then go in with here and there with different hues. The additional colors could certainly be the cheaper hobby craft paints.
I used mostly Floquil paints on mine, tones of gray, tan, red, creme, etc.
I’ve used a white wash made from inexpesive craft acrylics.just experiment with them.A sqiggle of white to about three tablespoons of water and a spoon of alcohol makes a wash, then basically let it flow into mortar lines.A little goes a long way,you just want tobring the mortar out slightly.Let that dry,at least an hour or aday if you like,then use a color that you like,try those make up applicators,you can get about fifty for a couple of bucks,then dab your color back on the bricks only. I’ve used reds,browns and oranges they all work well.When that’s dry, give a wash of india ink and alcohol.I buy a pint of alcohol and add two teaspoons of india ink to it and use it on everything. Remember that newer brick has more mortar showing, a lot of older buildings the mortar’s dirty.Use a little more black wash.Work with a little color at a time.Check the building in your area, you’ll see they’re many shades.
I wi***o thank you all for giving me some good sound advice.
I have been practicing on scrap material, and achieving good results.
Next I paint Merchants Row I.