Brickwork Pendon Style

[ozthedog]

After visiting the Pendon Museum I was inspired by models such as that below to have a go.



I had a few attempts at prototype brick work to see how difficult it was and the conclusion I came to was - yes it is tricky. This photo shows two attempts at brickwork along side a Ratio weighbridge office to give an idea of scale.



Viewed from a distance of about 60cm as in the picture my effort on the left does not look too bad.

However when viewed close up it doesn't compare with the enlarged Pendon photo. Mine first:-





It requires a very steady hand to produce regular sized, symmetrical bricks.

I quite like the effect I managed to obtain with the first few efforts and no doubt I could improve this with practice but would never get close to the Pendon standard. However we rarely look at brickwork close up and would normally view from a distance so I am tempted to practice some more and have a go at an actual building.

Reason for this post is that I wondered if others had tried the Pendon method for brickwork and if they would like to post pictures of their successes (and failures) and any tips they might have to help the rest of us improve our technique.

[hayfield]

Ozthedog

 

Your work does look very good and if this is the first attempt I would be very proud of it. The artists amoung us will no doubt help you with a few tricks of the trade, less paint on the brush or a slightly thicker mix ? But the watercolours look so much better than the type of paint used on the hut.

[Rob T]

Hi Ozthedog,

 

To be honest, for a first go this looks very good. I'm afraid there is no secret to this - just practice! To be frank, your first go is about as good as I have managed after about a year (on and off).

 

Whilst others are far more qualified and capable of helping, from my experience I have found that starting with larger stonework is good for improving your skills. In addition, you can initially use black biro for the pointing as this hides any inaccuracies.

 

Try looking at the Trenance layout thread (in layout topics) on p2 for a really good pictorial guide by a real master of the style.

 

Keep going, and let us see the results.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Rob.

[kandc_au]

Alos just remember, those who make the models at Pendon do NOT do it in a day or week.

They many many, many hours working on a model.....namely in the hundreds.

Add to that, your pic is VERY closeup....when the model is inplace you will not notice any discrepancies.

 

Wish it was mine...I lost patience!

 

Khris

[Campaman]

I have tried this method, and built an acceptable weigh bridge hut, I will have to dig it out and take a few pictures, I was not aiming for the same standard as Pendon as I do not want to spend that amount of time,but was pleased with the result and will be using it again.

 

What did you use to actually scribe your bricks with, and what type of card? and also what colours did you use? I have a full set of watercolours although I actually painted my model with acrylics.

[buffalo]

Very impressive first attempt. One of the reasons why your's doesn't compare with the Pendon example is that you've managed to produce a rather convincing representation of well-weathered hand-made brickwork, whereas the Pendon bricks have the much more regular shape and smooth surface texture of more modern machine-made bricks. I reckon you could develop your technique to produce a very convincing representation of 17th and 18th century farm buildings.

 

On the other hand, the Pendon example is a correct representation of Flemish bond, complete with the use of quarter width "queen closers" next to the corner bricks in alternate rows. Yours is simple stretcher bond which is in fact quite rare on anything but non-load-bearing single brick thickness walls before the 1920s. Since then it has become commonplace as it is used in both cavity walls and brick facing. I suggest persisting with your technique, but trying to reproduce english or flemish bonds.

 

Nick

[tomparryharry]

Try Youtube. I seem to remember a Pendon video on 'doing bricks'.

 

However, I think your work is spot-on. The 'effect' is the key: Stunning accuracy is not always the thing-too toy like.

 

Kind regards,

Ian

[brightspark]

I have tried the Pendon method. I think it works best for handmade bricks on cottages. For "machined" bricks I went back to plasticard but painted in the same method as Pendon.

I think that you would need a long learning curve to do machine bricks using this method, but suspect that the results would be worth the effort.

[ozthedog]

Here is my latest effort

 

 

The photo is taken from approx 25cm which is probably as close as you would get when viewing the model.  The brickwork is ~26mm long = to six foot six inches.The bricks are much squarer  than the earlier effort and are getting towards the Pendon photo I showed above.  I still need more practise but I thought I would share my progress to answer some of the questions above. 

 

One major improvement was achieved by using narrower scribing tools to imprint the card.  I used No 11 scalpel blades ground down with the Dremel.  The blades start out at 0.4mm thick. After removing the cutting edge I made the profiles in the pic below.  I also ground different examples to 0.1mm, 0.2mm and 0.3mm thickness.  0.2mm seems to give crisp brick edges that are more easily painted to.

 

The lower notched blade is used to mark off vertical side of the bricks.

 

 

The card is important also.  In his book "Cottage modelling for PendonChris Pilton recommends 0.55mm thick card.  I have had problems finding a commercial source of this thickness in reasonable quantities.  It is availale but I am not prepared to part with £50 for enough to last a few lifetimes at my level of my expertise. If anyone else is interested it might be worthwhile sharing buying a batch eg 

WBA SRA1 for 680 micron from http://www.piscesart.co.uk.  I am using Winsor and Newton white mount board purchased from The Range.  It is 1.2mm thick and seem to do the job.  Scribing the lines does not damage the surface and it takes watercolour paint well.

 

I am using Winsor and Newton Artists or Cotman watercolour paints  and mixing the brick colour from a base of light Red with Cadmium Orange and Burnt Sienna added to vary the shade.  Mortar is Chinese White with  a little Raw Sienna added.  These are as recommended by Chris Pilton.

 

After a little more practice filling in the bricks I think I shall move on to produce the first model.

 

One final tip - dont drink a double expresso before trying to paint the bricks. I was amazed at how much it made my hands shake.

 

Cheers

 

Keith

[C&WR]

Inspired by your thread & excellent results, ozthedog, I've also had a pop at this.  First the scribing out of the courses (apologies for poor pic taken on phone camera):

 

 

As always with slightly boring & very regular cutting (I am tearing out my hair about hand-cutting a GWR-style station valance) I found it really quite difficult!  I have about one course which satisfies me & even that's not quite right with a scale brick height of more than 3".  I was, however, using a reamer/punch from a copy Swiss Army knife as a scriber and a plastic straight edge which I had to hand at the time, so hope to improve on this.

 

Then a bit of painting.  Had my steel rule by this time & put it in for scale:

 

 

I was using a childhood tin of watercolours & was surprised how good the wash for the mortar came out, at least to my untutored eye.  The paintbox has a really good range of orange/red/brown shades which didn’t get used when I was a child, so plenty of room to experiment. 

 

Here I have tried the three colours which looked most “brick” to me.  How it dried out, & pictured under better light:

 

 

To be honest the scribing is the hardest bit, but this is no simple job overall.  The piece shown is a scale 20' x 4' (ish) so it's going to be a long, hard learning curve to make it look good & quite a bit of effort to produce anything more than a garden wall!

 

Still, I’m relatively happy for an experiment & first atttempt.  I spent about 20-30 minutes on the scribing & about 15-20 on the painting, so by applying a bit of time to it should get the practice to get a nice result.  I also think that using a steel square to make the horizontal scribes and a compass needle for the verticals rather than the reamer may help.  I’m still a long way off Pendon, though!

[ozthedog]

The card from the Range that I mentioned above is not up to the job.  Although the surface is good for scribing and painting I ran intoproblems trying to fabricate a corner.  The inner core is too soft so that when when a groove is cut into the back line of the corner and the corner then folded you don't end up with an external clean vertical  corner.  It needs a more uniformly  dense card and may be the reason why Pendon modellers use a thinner card.

 

Cheers

 

Keith

[C&WR]

Thanks for the tip, Keith.  I was using the thicker board as (like the Swiss Army knofe & plasic ruler) it was what I had to hand in a lunch break, and also as it seemed sturdy enough to practise on.

 

I am having kittens trying to work out how to do a corner in the bond shown on the Pendon model, even drawing it out on squared paper.  It's not going to be much simpler with the simple bond we've both tried.

 

I suspect a lot of foliage, downpipes etc might need to be deployed to hide the joins if I persevere with this method!

[Campaman]

Here is a small hut I knocked up last weekend, I used 1mm white mountboard, it has a very smooth white surface both sides, you have to score from behind to a reasonable depth to get the corners to fold square, I used a sharpened point for the stone scribing that came as part of my craft knife set, and a ground No. 11 scalpel blade in a Swan Moreton handle for the brick work, no where near perfect by the overall effect looks OK.

 

 

 

I need to do something about the seam on the chimney stack, but overall its a usable model.

 

Not the best pictures, but its dark here in my conservatory :-)

[allan downes]

After visiting the Pendon Museum I was inspired by models such as that below to have a go.

 

 

I had a few attempts at prototype brick work to see how difficult it was and the conclusion I came to was - yes it is tricky. This photo shows two attempts at brickwork along side a Ratio weighbridge office to give an idea of scale.

 

 

Viewed from a distance of about 60cm as in the picture my effort on the left does not look too bad.

 

However when viewed close up it doesn't compare with the enlarged Pendon photo. Mine first:-

 

 

 

It requires a very steady hand to produce regular sized, symmetrical bricks.

 

I quite like the effect I managed to obtain with the first few efforts and no doubt I could improve this with practice but would never get close to the Pendon standard. However we rarely look at brickwork close up and would normally view from a distance so I am tempted to practice some more and have a go at an actual building.

 

Reason for this post is that I wondered if others had tried the Pendon method for brickwork and if they would like to post pictures of their successes (and failures) and any tips they might have to help the rest of us improve our technique.

 

With no disrespect to Pendon, I think your bricks are far more realistic - Brilliant!!!

[allan downes]

Inspired by your thread & excellent results, ozthedog, I've also had a pop at this.  First the scribing out of the courses (apologies for poor pic taken on phone camera):

 

 

As always with slightly boring & very regular cutting (I am tearing out my hair about hand-cutting a GWR-style station valance) I found it really quite difficult!  I have about one course which satisfies me & even that's not quite right with a scale brick height of more than 3".  I was, however, using a reamer/punch from a copy Swiss Army knife as a scriber and a plastic straight edge which I had to hand at the time, so hope to improve on this.

 

Then a bit of painting.  Had my steel rule by this time & put it in for scale:

 

 

I was using a childhood tin of watercolours & was surprised how good the wash for the mortar came out, at least to my untutored eye.  The paintbox has a really good range of orange/red/brown shades which didn’t get used when I was a child, so plenty of room to experiment. 

 

Here I have tried the three colours which looked most “brick” to me.  How it dried out, & pictured under better light:

 

 

To be honest the scribing is the hardest bit, but this is no simple job overall.  The piece shown is a scale 20' x 4' (ish) so it's going to be a long, hard learning curve to make it look good & quite a bit of effort to produce anything more than a garden wall!

 

Still, I’m relatively happy for an experiment & first atttempt.  I spent about 20-30 minutes on the scribing & about 15-20 on the painting, so by applying a bit of time to it should get the practice to get a nice result.  I also think that using a steel square to make the horizontal scribes and a compass needle for the verticals rather than the reamer may help.  I’m still a long way off Pendon, though!

 Guys, please forgive me for butting in, but you can try TOO hard!

 

Brickwork, even new, isn't laid with engineereing perfection no more than were the hand made bricks of long ago all made  exactly the same.

 

The brickwork I'm seeing produced here by members, is how it REALLY was and I would just love to see a complete building using these methods and my bet is, that Pendon or not, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

 

I think you've got it well mastered - now lets see a building!

 

Allan

[C&WR]

Thanks, Allan, may just have a bash.  I'm planning a cattle dock for my layout, so you may have set me a challenge!

 

At the moment I'm concentrating on scratch building stuff with bought textures.  Here's the latest effort:

 

[Campaman]

Snipped....

 

I think you've got it well mastered - now lets see a building!

 

Allan

 

Here's a building, ignore the top half as that was an experiment with foam board, the bottom is all hand scribed and painted with water colours.

 

 

[allan downes]

Here's a building, ignore the top half as that was an experiment with foam board, the bottom is all hand scribed and painted with water colours.

 

 

SPOT ON!!

 

As you say, the top is on only experimental, fair enough, but where models are concerned, the roof is the largest single expanse of a building and is what we see first from a natural viewing perspective and totally opposite to how we view a building in the real World - from the ground up and not really much of an idea at all as to what it is that keeps the rain out!

 

So, if you put as much work into the roof as you have done below it, well... Pendon eat your heart out!

 

Yep, BEST brickwork I've seen to date.

 

Allan

[Campaman]

The chimneys were done using the same method as the bottom, the roof tiles are strips with individual tiles cut half way through the strip before laying, ridge tiles are individual tiles and the flashing is thin paper, chimney pots rolled paper, again all painted with water colours.

[Guest jonte]

Hi Ozthedog and Campaman,

 

Some smashing results there, and I agree: Pendon beware!!!

 

Incidentally, I don't know if you're aware, but Mikemeg another contributor and professional artist achieved some amazing results on his layout Hassle Haven using card (Yorkshire Tea packaging variety) scribed and painted with artists gouache which I attach (hope you don't mind of course) and trust you will find of interest (Mikes 1,2,3,4.....on how to do it can be found about half way down the page) http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/12664-hessle-haven/page-3

 

I also hope you don't mind me hi-jacking this excellent thread by making mention of paper/card rooves as alluded to by Campaman in his previous post. Now, I'm certainly no expert here, but if I may throw in my tuppence ha'p'orth by mentioning that I recently tried the method of 'individual slates' using graph paper glued to a card former and painted with thin washes of a variety of Humbrol greys, greens reds and blacks finished off with a spattering of weathering powder, although I don't think this part was strictly necessary (I had it so I used it!) , as previous attempts with strips of half cut through card didn't quite 'do it' for me. Whilst the exercise took a lot more effort and patience than using the strip method, not to mention a course of prescribed medication to get over the effects, in the end I was far happier with the finish. I've taken the liberty of attaching a pic. which I hope you will find of interest and pushed my luck of attaching an unashamed link to my blog for those who might actually like it and wish to have a bash themselves (the full 'how to' can be found there). http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/766/entry-11063-station-building-liverpool-cheapside-gwr-build-completed/ It was all just the result of trial and error and a lot of happy accidents. I shall certainly build all my rooves this way in future. Ironically, the rooves were never intended for close scrutiny as the baseboard upon which they're perched is fixed almost six feet off the ground so can only be seen from a distance which is why the backs aren't weathered and the buildings have no rear elevations (I used Superquick as I could never attempt realistic brickwork of the sort you're producing).

 

Again, I hope you don't mind and find this of interest.

 

Best wishes,

 

Jonte

[PhilH]

You might find this site helpful.

[Guest jonte]

You might find this site helpful.

Ah yes, the maestro, Monsieur Nouallier.

 

I first admired his work whilst a member of the 'Dark Side'. 

 

Perhaps a little too 'Continental' for our British outline models?

 

Jonte

[PhilH]

Ah yes, the maestro, Monsieur Nouallier.

 

I first admired his work whilst a member of the 'Dark Side'. 

 

Perhaps a little too 'Continental' for our British outline models?

 

Jonte

I personally think the methods are relevant to many styles of building.

[C&WR]

Right, inspired by mikemeg's methods on http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/12664-hessle-haven/page-3]mikemeg's methods on Hessle Haven[/url] and following Allan's challenge I'm having a bash at BYO brickwork. I'm making a cattle dock for a remote part of my layout so if it's a bit rough it won't be too obvious & this can be obscured by ordure!

 

First of all the card. Being a soft Southerner my tea box is Waitrose Earl Grey, it belongs to The Long Haired Controller, honest! Piece of card scribed out for the size I need, this is 160mm x 45mm. Tools are as seen, my trusty steel rule & an old knife pinched from the kitchen drawer:

 

 

I tried to get this nice & regular by making pin pricks at the start & end of each course and then doing Chubber's trick of locking the straight-edge against the blade at each end before scoring. This was a partial success because I rushed is, as were the vertical scores but it didn't look hugely wrong.

 

Then in a departure from mikemeg's technique I gave it a wash of my nice mortar-coloured watercolour:

 

 

Note to self, do not depart from the experts' ways. I fear a complete disaster as the light wash seems to have furred up the card, covering over the carefully cut courses!

 

Now to leave it to dry for a bit, return to brick papers which I can model in, and try the printer's tampon thing for the actual bricks when this has dried.

 

Edit to add:

 

Yes, I had banjaxed the card completely with the first wash. I also then tried out the tampon thing but obviously got the mix of watercolour too runny & it filled the mortar courses, not covering the brinks nicely. Back to square one.

 

One bright thing was that I went looking for watercolours & found these:

 

 

My Father was a railway civil engineer & rescued them when his office moved over to CAD. I had a lot of fun with them when I was younger but had no talent as a watercolourist & the palette was a bit limited. Ideal for brickwork & weathering, though!

[Guest jonte]

Right, inspired by mikemeg's methods on mikemeg's methods on Hessle Haven and following Allan's challenge I'm having a bash at BYO brickwork.  I'm making a cattle dock for a remote part of my layout so if it's a bit rough it won't be too obvious & this can be obscured by ordure!

 

First of all the card.  Being a soft Southerner my tea box is Waitrose Earl Grey, it belongs to The Long Haired Controller, honest!  Piece of card scribed out for the size I need, this is 160mm x 45mm.  Tools are as seen, my trusty steel rule & an old knife pinched from the kitchen drawer:

 

 

I tried to get this nice & regular by making pin pricks at the start & end of each course and then doing Chubber's trick of locking the straight-edge against the blade at each end before scoring.  This was a partial success because I rushed is, as were the vertical scores but it didn't look hugely wrong.

 

Then in a departure from mikemeg's technique I gave it a wash of my nice mortar-coloured watercolour:

 

 

Note to self, do not depart from the experts' ways.  I fear a complete disaster as the light wash seems to have furred up the card, covering over the carefully cut courses!

 

Now to leave it to dry for a bit, return to brick papers which I can model in, and try the printer's tampon thing for the actual bricks when this has dried.

 

Edit to add:

 

Yes, I had banjaxed the card completely with the first wash.  I also then tried out the tampon thing but obviously got the mix of watercolour too runny & it filled the mortar courses, not covering the brinks nicely.  Back to square one.

 

One bright thing was that I went looking for watercolours & found these:

 

 

My Father was a railway civil engineer & rescued them when he retired.  I had a lot of fun with them when I was younger but had no talent as a watercolourist & the palette was a bit limited.  Ideal for brickwork & weathering, though!

Hi C&WR.

 

Glad you found Mike's methods useful and have decided to give them a bash (and make your own amendments to suit!).

 

I shall follow with interest,

 

Jonte