Painting the bridge

Painting the bridge started with priming it in red oxide with an aerosol. You can paint directly onto plastic card but priming a model gives the paint something to key onto and facilitates the application of an even coat of paint. A heavy dry brush of my chosen brick base colour was follow by a thick wash of mortar colour. This is then followed by another dry brush of the brick colour to leave just the mortar colour between the bricks.

Very little brickwork is just one colour and bricks even from the same batch can vary quite considerably, especially with older bricks. To replicate this I use three different colours, one lighter than the base colour and two darker.  Painting each colour in a scatter pattern, soon starts to break up the base colour without having to paint every brick. Sometimes this can look a little stark or pixely, so to reduce this effect I give the brickwork one final, very light dry brush of the base colour again, which tends to blend everything together.

Having passed under a local railway bridge I became aware that most have water seepage and damp stains running down them so added these in with some life colour acrylics. You can't see it in the photos as it was added later but another finishing touch was to add smoke blasts from the trains

, however I did this later as I wanted to locate the bridge in situ to ensure the soot marks lined up with the tracks.