Painting brickwork

[Bullshott]

I just had delivered a plasticville town hall kit. I want to turn this into a 19th century European (French or middle-European style) civic building (museum, town hall, etc as required for my games). This will hopefully just involve adding grilles on the windows and giving it an appropriate paint job.

The model has nice brickwork that should dry-brush well. Can some one suggest a good technique (and paint colours) to get the bese brickwork effect.

[Overlord]

This is how I painted the (red) brickwork on my Geezers buildings: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=7181.105

1.  I painted the whole thing with Sandstone (B&Q smooth masonry paint tester pot).  This needs thinning slightly with a little water over the brickwork, to ensure that it gets down in between the bricks. This then forms the mortar. (you may not need to thin the paint on plastic)

2.  Once this has dried completely (overnight reccomended) I then drybushed the brickwork with Etruscan Red* (Sandtex masonry paint sample pot).  This needs to be done at 45 degrees to the bricks so that it doesnt go into the mortar course.  Gradually build up the paint on the bricks, rather than trying to do it all in one go.

3.  I then randomly painted individual odd bricks using the Etruscan Red with a bit of dark brown or blue added. this gives a randomness to the bricks which looks much more realistic.  Go and look at some (older) brick buildings to see what I mean.

4.  Finally a light drybrush with the Sandstone to bring all the colours together.

*I used the Etruscan Red rather than Brick Red as it is a less intense (& slightly more orange colour) which seemed to suit older faded brickwork.

The technique should be fine with resin or plastic buildings

[vikotnik]

Zafarelli did a nice paint job on his industrial buildings:


I'll send him a link to this thread, so he could answer.

[Zafarelli]

Here is a tutorial on how I paint my brickwork: http://pardulon.com/catalog/hobby.php?param=painting&language=en#4

It works with other colours as well, I once did a few Middle Eastern buildings for a customer following the same technique, just using a different palette:

[Aaron]

If you use Vallejo colors try burnt cadmium red, cavalry brown, and red leather (from darkest to lightest). Red leather is actually a nice muted orangey red.