23/01/2013

Brick Wall Part 2


 
In this post  about making a brick-wall (part 2)  I will show you  how I coloured  and cut the sheets of sanding-paper that I used  for creating my bricks.





After priming the sheets ( I think used about 10 or 15 sheets all together) with gesso, I covered them all with a transparant  layer of burnt sienna (this is called a "glacis" in  dutch) . I let this dry throroughly. On top of that I put some burnt umber, sometimes diluted with lots of water, sometimes apllied a bit thicker.




With the burnt umber still a bit wet, I applied another layer of transparant colour, this time I used some cadmium red. Because the layer underneath is still a bit wet, both colours mix in a surprisingly way.





I made  sure to cover all the sheets of sanding-paper with multiple transparant layers of colour,
but I did not treat every sheet exactly the same as the other.
For  the bricks need to differ slightly from each other, but must harmony together.
Sometimes I waited  for the layer underneath to dry completely before applying the next one , sometimes I put a fresh layer of "glacis" on top of a still wet layer of paint. And sometimes I just let my wet  brush drip above the sheet and wait  for whatever happens. I simply experimented  a little with serveral colours, like umber, sienna, ocre, ultramarine and white.









In the end I had lot of sheets in variations of a brownish-red,
as you can see for example in the picture below.





The next step  would be cutting the sheets of sanding-paper
 in long pieces of 5 mm width.
I made a handy tool for this;  it existed of a wooden stick with two pieces of wood glued at each end of it. Both  pieces were 5 mm width, so they had exactly the measurement of the paper strips to be cut.
I  made sure the length of my sheets fitted nicely between the two  extruding  wooden parts.





In this way I cut the sheets, one after the other, in strips of 5 mm width.






I used a strong craft-knife and frequently replaced the blades for the sanding-paper blunts them in no-time!
It's really convenient  if one glues the strip of wood on a plastic household plate (for slicing vegetables, etc) so you won't ruin your cutting-mat.






As you can see, I ended up with lots of  long strips, 
slighty (but sometimes very!) different in colour from each other.







The most efficient way of cutting all strips in smaller pieces,
is by taking a single strip and drawing a vertical line every 18 mm.
I used a piece of cardboard to do this,
so I did not have to measure every 18 mm with a ruler.






When I had marked every 18 mm on  a single strip, I held this strip together with 4 or 5 other strips. With a pair of scissors I cut every pencilmark. In this way, I got  about 6 "bricks" with every singel cut.
In the end, I mixed all single " bricks" together.





I painted the walls of the house in grey, as you can see in picture below.







After cutting all strips of sanding-paper into pieces 18 mm width, I asked the  roadmaker to drop them in front of my house :-)






Next, I drew horizontal lines on every wall of the house, perpendicular with the coners of the house. 
The distance between every horizontal line is 6 mm ( again  I used a self-made ruler, see my Post about  making a slated roof). 





 I started gluing the "bricks" on a  horizontal line, leaving about 1 mm between every "brick" .
I used white glue and this worked well.







 As you can see in the picture, I made vertical pencilmarks to be sure the bricks would  follow a straight line from the top of the house untill the groudfloor  






In this way I decorated the main walls of my house and it took me a whole winter! So now you have red both my posts about paper-bricks and you still are convinced you can do this too without having a nervous breakdown in the end, I think this is just the right technique for you :-) 














12/01/2013

Brick Wall Part 1





In this post I will make a start in showing how I decorated the outer wall of Miniature House. In reality the bricks are pieces of sanding paper, coloured with acrylic colours for artists.  It is an inexpensive way of decorating the outside of your house, but on the other hand it takes a lot of your time and patience too......
I made use of a technique that is shown in a book written by Beryl Armstrong:



In her book Beryl shows a way of cutting paper with  a self-made device to 1:12 brick-size. I did a few experiments with a variety of papers and paints before I decided on using sanding-paper with a medium grain and painting the paper myself using multiple layers of transparant colours.
I started with priming several sheets of the sanding paper with gesso:

 






I used a fairly rough brush and as you can see in the picture, I made a kind of stamping move with it to create even more texture than is already in the grain of the paper. I let it dry thoroughly.



Next, I took some burnt sienna and covered all the sheets with this colour, applying it unevenly so as to keep the surface lively ; sometimes really watery, sometimes using a thicker substance.





So far the first part of my brick-wall-making.  In the next post, I'll show you how I coloured and cut all sheets of sanding paper.