What color paint do you guys use to simulate mortar on brick walls? I’ve found out that white is too bright by experience.
J.P.
I seem to remember reading somewhere to use “Aged Concrete”.
GUB
Gray works quite well.
I rub Hydrocal into the mortar joints, and then lightly mist above it (the “rain” technique) with water. After the Hydrocal sets, I rub off the excess with a paper towel, and then brush it with a thin India-Ink-in-water wash to tone down the bright white color.
I tried white paint as well. The amount of dark washes to tone it down almost gave my building a burnt out look. Next time I’d try diluted gray paint. Others will have their opinions of course. Luckily, I’m modeling a run down town in the 1930’s-1940’s.
PolyScale “Sand” paint works too.
Liquid white shoe polish. Rub it on, let it set for about 10 seconds, and then rub it off with a dry cloth. It leaves most of the white still in the mortar lines. I then use a diluted wash of india ink to tone things down a bit.
For bricks set in mortar, the mason uses, what else, mortar. Mortar is mostly cement with some sand and possibly lime in varying amounts. Cement comes in various shades of grey. So…mortar comes in various shades of grey as well.
White is definitely the wrong color for mortar. Some fancy buildings used a white mortar, or had the mortar painted white but most ordinary buildings were just built with plain grey mortar.
There are exceptions, of course, but just examine some brick buildings and you will get a general idea as to what mortar color is suitable for you model building.
Good stuff guys, thanks!
I have problems with mortar in brickwork (HO scale). I have tried many techniques such as washes and applying thick paint, or spackle, etc. and then wiping it off with a clean rag.
The problem I have with the wash method is (1) if the wash is to dilute it does not high light the mortar when it dries, and (2) if I have a more concentrated solution the mortar lines are visible, but the dry brick work has an “unnatural” wash of mortar color over it. When looking at old brick buildings in my city (many well over 100 years old) , I do not see the extreme “weathered” thin light chalky haze which this method appears to produce. I use Polly Scale paints. A question is, does this method depend on using a solvent based paint for the brickwork followed by a water based paint wash, with the idea that a water based paint may not like the solvent paint surface and thus run into the mortar engravings? Can one have success using water based paint over water based paint (e.g. Polly Scale over Poly Scale)? If so, how does one avoid the development of the haze over the brickwork when the wash dries?
Also, when I used the wipe method, I find that the wiping removes some of the Polly Scale brick color which subsequently gets deposited in the motar lines, thus removing the motar-brick contrast.
Could someone kindly give me some advice on the technique of producing mortar lines, because I am totally stumped after many, many attempts, and I am about to give up on trying to produce mortar lines.
Thank you very much.
Empty Net
Real masons sometimes use a powdered additive to colour the mortar, too. If you’ve got a spare piece of brick material, try painting it several different shades of “brick” colour, then try several different shades of “mortar” to see which ones go together best. In earlier times, bricks were usually made not too far from where they were going to be used, so different regions often had a brick colour peculiar to that region. In the city that I grew up in, the predominant brick colour was quite orange, while 50 miles away, most brick was a buff colour. I used Floquil reefer orange to paint this structure, then applied pre-mixed drywall mud to all wall surfaces, using a rag. When it dried, a clean, dry rag was used to wipe away the excess. Then, the entire structure was given a generous thinned wash of dirty grey PollyScale paint. I applied this at the top of the walls and let it run down, siphoning off the excess with a paper towel. Don’t brush the walls any more than absolutely necessary, or you’ll remove the mortar.
Same orange base colour on this one, but no “mortar”. Instead, it got several very thin washes of a dirty brown, again PollyScale.
Wayne
I used about all the different methods.
Here’s one of my first attempt using white paint rubbed on and then by used a sponge (both round and triangle types are found in the make-up aisle of Wally World) of red color over the top for brick color. Note more red and white show up in the camera shot then looking at it in person. Then I used a light wash of black color. I keep it because it was my first attempt.
And a later example. This was using gray paint as the motar.
And another example.
Just keep trying different methods until one works for you.
Nice example of using an old Weekly Herald building in a new way in that first picture, Wayne. [:)]
One of the things to try before you throw in the towel is powdered pastel chalks. I’ve uses every thing from light grey to black depending on what color mortar lines I wanted. Just shave off some of the pastel chalk with a dull knife into a bowl and then use a large brush to “paint” the building with the mortar color. You can remove a good bit of it that gets on the bricks with a quick shot of canned air. Go a little heavy because you are going to seal it with Dulcote, which will tone down the mortar color a lot. That was good advice to practice on some scrap brick as it does take some time to get it right. You can do it, Fred. It just takes trying some different techniques and some patience
Thank you very much to those who responed to my mortar modeling problems. I will try the advice you have given.
Empty Net.