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Painting blockwork

Will Vale

Entry posted by Will Vale

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Step 1 by Will Vale, on Flickr

 

I thought I'd try and put a step-by-step up for this, because when I went back to the earlier entry on this tunnel portal to try and duplicate the painting onto the second wall, I found I hadn't listed the paint colours. So this is partly for my benefit. But maybe it'll be useful. It's always tricky to remember to put the brushes down and take pictures between steps. Usual disclaimer - I don't think this is an exemplary result - it looks good from six inches away, but it's a bit weird at 100% magnification. But it was very quick and easy to achieve.

 

Step 1, as seen above, was to undercoat the new surfaces with Games Workshop Chaos Black. This covers well, but has an annoying sheen to it. Luckily this will get killed by the painting steps. I painted out the places I'd applied more clay to the finished side with black at the same time.

 

Step 2 is to drybrush the wall liberally with brown - in this case Graveyard Earth. Working mostly from top to bottom and from the corner inwards. I was pretty sloppy here and didn't worry too much about all the usual "remove the paint from the brush until you can't see any at all" advice - the idea here is to add a lot of colour quickly.

 

 

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Step 3 is to do the same (with a bit less paint this time) with a warmer brown called Calthan Brown to get some variation in tone.

 

 

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Step 4 attempts to age the browns and bring them towards neutral using a light blue-grey called Astronomican Grey. I love the names, they're so silly. For this step I varied the pressure on the brush, and used the smaller brush as well, in order to get a mixture of drybrushing and vertical streaking.

 

 

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Step 5 uses my favourite GW paint colour - Dheneb Stone. It's a warm light grey and is very useful for concrete, stonework, and any time you want to lighten colours without introducing white. I drybrushed with this fairly gently, and also stippled it onto the copings which are made from a much lighter stone. Note that the black still shows through a bit - I think this is OK.

 

 

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Step 6 is more work on the copings. I warmed them up by drybrushing and stippling with the Graveyard Earth I started the walls with, and then drybrushed more Dheneb Stone to re-highlight the edges. I think without this the colour is too cool.

 

 

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Step 7 is where I did three steps and forgot to take pictures, sorry! I drybrushed the blocks with a skin tone called Tallarn Flesh to push them towards the pink tone seen in the prototype pictures. I probably put a bit too much on to be honest - I like the result on the portal wall better than on the wing wall. I also got the black and white paints out. White to very gingerly highlight the copings, and less gingerly to make some bloom marks on the stonework and sharpen everything up. If you find you put too much on, smudging it with a finger usually rescues things.

 

I mixed the black with one of the browns - Graveyard Earth I think - and used this to re-touch the edges of some blocks on the corner of the two walls. When drybrushing you automatically end up highlighting corners and raised detail, and while this is good in moderation I think it was too strong here. I did keep a bit of highlighting, just not all of it. Compare the corner above with the corner below - I think the lower one looks more natural.

 

 

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And that's it. To show how messy this looks in detail, have a look at these painful close-ups. I think the diagonal pattern in the lower pic is my thumbprint captured in the clay... The thing which annoys me about the result is the saw cuts I thought I'd lined up in the copings are rather mis-aligned. Hopefully I can stuff greenery into those gaps and hide it all when I bed the portal into the scene. I'll also look at adding some green algae staining at that point since I'll know where the plants are.

 

 

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I think one remaining job is probably to rub some powders into the new wall - I think I did that for the old one, it certainly looks a bit more coherent than the new one.

 

Hope this was interesting! If you follow through this far, step 8 should probably be to apologise to your brushes for all the nasty things you did to them.

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richbrummitt

It's easy to be harsh on yourself (I know, I suffer from the same) striving to do better. Reality is always kinder than the camera at this size and I think I'd be really happy with what you achieved.

 

I also know what you mean about brushes. Dry brushing really does seem to hurt them - a lot. I notice you have one of those stippling brushes with short hard/stiff bristles. How are they? I've looked at them but am not sure what applications they have and how the effects are. I imagine that you get small splotches somewhere between drybrushing without all the paint removed and using kitchen paper on paint that is still wet?

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Chris Nevard

Spot on! And so much better than the 'painting by numbers effect' seen all too often where people paint every stone a different colour, and then go bonkers in the process - the result looking nothing like anything I've seen in real life. Nature is very subtle, random and very different to painting a loco. Interestingly (well not really) I use the same method as you!

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Will Vale

Thanks chaps. I am pretty happy (although big pics are always startling - you see much more than with the naked eye!) I just wish I'd done it all at once since the finish on the end wall is a bit better than on the wing wall. I'm really pleased with the honey-coloured coping stone though, using black undercoat was a good experiment there.

 

I notice you have one of those stippling brushes with short hard/stiff bristles. How are they?

 

The small brush I have in that picture is one Games Workshop sell particularly for drybrushing - I have a stippling brush too but it has noticeably stiffer bristles. The GW drybrush is great, I'm still on my first one and it hasn't deteriorated at all. The bristles have a nice spring so you can get different effects by varying the pressure. Their big drybrush (about 3/4", also in some of the pics above) is a useful time-saver but it's a bit more expensive. Still cheap for a tool I use all the time though.

 

I used the stippling brush for doing the interiors for various ballast wagons with tube acrylics. It leaves a nice imprint in the paint and it's great for blending wet-on-wet paint without making it all look soft and unnatural. This one is all done with a stippling brush and three or four basic colours, with Klear added after for the puddles.

 

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I recall being inspired to try this by a post Martin (Pugsley) made before I joined the forum - I think he'd done some PNA interiors with paint + talc?

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richbrummitt

Thanks Will. I can see more of the bank balance disappearing into a GW till. I really like their paint but wish they did more colours to suit what I require. Ho hum.

 

That picture in your reply is rammed with detail and subtle colouring. Very nice.

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twoscoops

An excellent post and very helpful.  I need to paint a similar effect onto a 3ft long engine shed so your idea of not having to pick out the individual stones is excellent.

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