Hi guys,

I am doing an urban dio for Ardennes Offensive. I got a plaster kit called "Ruined Mansion" from Verlinden.

This is the first time I'll be painting ruins. I tried to follow an article here where the instructions said everything to be sprayed black and drybrushed with gray. It didn't work and it doesn't look good.

Can anyone tell me how to paint ruins, cobblestones and sidewalks? I'll be re-painting it tomorrow. What should be the primary color and what should I do to paint it more realistically?

Here is the condition of the dio: Everything is in place and the cobblestone street and sidewalk is already scribed. Everything is painted in black. I painted it using a spray can (to save paint for my airbrush)

Can someone help me? I'll be buying a can of the correct color later. Thank you.

Angela

Hi Angela:

I recently used that exact same kit in my Battle of the Bulge diorama. You can see pictures in my gallery. After using spray can primer, I painted it entirely by hand. If you want to try your hand at airbrushing it, there is a good article by Keith Forsyth on the website: Roadkill's Plaza http://users.pandora.be/ronny.noben/website/index.htm

There are tabs on the left, click on "Tips" and there are numerous artciles you can click on. Check out Keith's article Building a Simple Diorama. It is a pdf.

Hope this helps.

Keith

Hi Angela
I can only second the tip that Keith has recommended above. When I first got into modelling, Doc Dios was the first site I found. Excellent and easy to follow, step by steps. Its great that Ronnie has managed to get those articles.

I still follow those steps today. Firstly, I also paint with humbrols so there is that bit more working time. Black is a good colour to start with, as its sort of a preshading and gives depth.
For the bricks
Paint about 50% of the bricks at random with your first base colour (brick red). Then paint the other 50% with a second similar base colour (earth and wine mixed). No need to be perfect.. a good quick job with a wide brush will do.Then take a few pale colours to get lighter shades.... sand, flesh, white and grey. Then mix each of these with the 2 base colours... you now have 8 colours .. all similar but different enough to have effect. Dry brush all your bricks with the different 8 colours at random. No need to clean brush as further mixing will only add to the effect. If you want you can lighten all these again with sand or flesh and do a second lighter dry brush at random .. doesn´t matter if it is the same colour as the first time. When your finished you have a real multi-coloured wall. Pick out a few bricks in pure sand, a few more in flesh, and a few in dark grey. Finished.
The cobblestones. The same thing again ... 2 base colours of grey ... mix with four pale colours ..browns, greens, flesh, etc all work good here. complete as above.
Now paint all other details in your usual fashion.
Now if you have an airbrush .. filters tie all this together. Mist over lightly .. the whole base. Several times. If you dont have an airbrush.. washes will suffice. When this is dry ... I mix humbrol thinner, a light grey humbrol and light grey pastels together. This is then washed into the scribeings of the bricks to resemble concrete. Wipe off the bricks with a cotton top, but no need for perfection either as this will all look natural when dry. Give the cobbles a good wash with burnt umber between the stones.
Now just dust with a mist of dust colour thinned and then pastels.
This is how I did the ruin below ... very quick considering .. no need to take great care at all.


Base is built up first ... just like in Doc Dios.


this is the final result ...the lights have washed out some of the colour change in the bricks. But this is also why you can slap it on quickly ... with filters and dusting .. that wont be seen

I doubt there is a ceramic ruin kit by Verlinden or Custom Dio i haven't built or painted... here are my tips on doing ceramics with Acryllics:

1) prime the kit with a light beige, grey, or off-white... this will prevent the porous cermaic from sponging in your paint.

2) Dry Brush the bricks with a singular color... use the dry brushing method, which will allow the lighter color primer to show through as mortar or goutting.

3) Come back and pick out about 30% of the bricks and shade them in variations of the original color. For example, if you use Red Brick as the base brick color, come back and mix a small batch with Tan, another batch with Pink, and another batch with Charcoal or burnt umber... this will give you three additional brick tones that can be used to randomly add variation to the bricks.

4) After allowing this to dry, come back and do a wash of dark sienna or burnt umber with a bit of black to indicate exhaust, fire, smoke etc. in given areas.

A sample outcomeof this method is shown below:

Hi kbm, PlasticBattle and KFMagee,

Thank you very much for the advice. I think I'm ready to tackle painting the ruins now.

One more question that I wanna ask. How do you make a pile of rubble?

Thank you in advance

Angela

A pile of rubble is pretty simple.
If you want a big one I'd first put down a roughly sculpted chunk of styrofoam. Then apply a coating of white glue and then take large chuncks of broken plaster and boards (balsa)bricks etc. Whatever the main building is made of - use that as debris.
Paint the styrofoam a dark color before you glue rubble to it.

Fill in the smaller gaps with smaller chunks. Study some pictures of rubble on some history sites to see how the stuff falls, where it falls,how far away it falls etc.

Thank you very much slodder.

Angela

Hi Angela. Have you downloaded the Doc Dio´s files from Roadkill´s site yet? I really recommend you do, and read it ... its the best explanation you´ll get, with step by step photographs as it goes along. Its exactly how I still do it and pretty much an expanded version of Slodder´s method! Good luck.

Hi Plastic Battle,

No, I haven't downloaded it yet. Could you provide me a link? Thank you.

Angela

Click here for Roadkill´s site
The links are images of tanks on the left hand side of the screen.
The fifth one down is "tips". Click there.
Scroll down through all the tips to "Building a simple diorama (by Keith Forsyth) ". Click on the heading.
The PDF file should open, but if not click on the save icon, and save it to your harddrive.Then you can read it from there when you want or print it out.
Download the other as well, as both a very useful and helpful.
Good luck.