The Joy of Painting and a few late nights...

The weekend saw a few late nights (such devotion to the hobby, or did I just get carried away)

I'm still not sure if the stone is too dark, but then again, it's supposed to represent a pre-Clean Air Act environment, and I've seen some buildings here in Leeds that are STILL black...

The stonework was treated to several layers of built up colour - having an overall sand colour applied as a base, then washed over with dilute brown. When dry (speeded up with a hair dryer) it was treated to an additional wash of dilute black.

Once this was dry, I painstakingly went over all the mortar course lines with a dilute magnolia mix, which settled into all the mortar lines. Some were a little clogged from the multiple coats of paint these walls have received, but I think that is perfectly acceptable as it breaks up the uniformity. Once this had all dried it left a tide mark around some of the edges (more noticeably on the track side where it had got really late and I got a bit more urgent in painting, opting to just splash it on rather than follow the mortar courses) which was then hidden with a dry brush of brown black to weather it all up.

I'm very pleased with how the roof has gone:

Close up photography can be very cruel - it shows up the patchy and sometimes wonky edges on the bargeboards and guttering - I'll have to go over them again. The roof tiles will alsoo receive a bit more weathering - especially around the chimney stacks. I also noticed when photographing this morning that I missed painting a bit of leading around one of them

The mortar shown here is probably a bit too light as it faces trackside and I think it's going to be treated to additional weathering to make it REALLY sooty.

Up on the Roof

I'd like to post something a bit more complete in terms of a finished model, but it's been such slow progress as of late, what with painting disasters and such like, so I thought I'd show you a Champagne moment - I've finished tiling the roof!

All the ridge tiles are on, as per my previous explanation, involving cutting 4mm strips of 10 thou, scoring and folding in half, then gluing microstrip on at intervals. Flashing was added to the base of all the chimney stacks, before a Midnight session of Primer spraying in the garage just before bed last night.. "Cough Cough, oops - should have worn a mask..."

Now I'm torn between starting the painting proper in earnest, or adding the chimney pots first, to get everything painted at the same time. I think I'm tending towards adding the pots last, as there's less chance of them getting knocked off, and it should be easy enough to patch in the painting. I absolutely cannot wait to get painting again now - the left bay roof went really well, so I'll be employing the same colouring there and then going for the stonework!

having had to take out the windows, meant also removing the floors from the second level, but what it has given me is opportunity to srpay the interior grey.

My worst critic...

...is me!

Despite the positive comments I received about the initial weathering on the station building both here and over on RMWeb, I decided that it just wasn't right for what I wanted. Maybe it was seeing both the real thing and other modeller's treatment of the same sort of soot-stained stonework, but it just didn't do it for me, so I painted over it all again with a light sandstone colour, then over a period of a couple of days washed over a lighter mix to represent the mortar and once dry, dry brushed over the soot colour. This wasn't right either.

So, having seen an alternative method over on RMWeb, I painted it sandstone all over (at this stage, I'd got paint all over the windows, so they had to come out). then washed over with a watery  mix of black and red with a drop of washing up liquid.. Hmm - this didn't look quite as required...so once again, I worked up several washes of the mortar mix and then set to heavily weathering the stonework.. This time it seemed to go quite well, and I was pretty pleased with it....until of course, I then decided it had gone too far and looked too black

you can just see on the right the very dark weathering. At this stage, with the windows removed, it looked more like a bombed and burnt out wreck

Having spent hours and hours getting nowhere, I then mixed up a new base colour with a view to trying yet again. At this stage, I still hadn't finished the guttering and tiling the roof, so I decided to abandon painting until I'd finished modelling the main parts.

more failed stonework painting

So this weekend, has seen a renewed effort in guttering and roof tiling. I've now almost finished tiling the main building (having already finished and painted the right bay), with just the left bay to finish up.

Since removing the windows, I've developed a slightly better technique for making the windows, giving a little more relief. This time the frames are to be painted cream, so I 'll be making each window up from 6 layers of self adhesive vinyl, then spraying with undercoat and painting them cream, before attaching them to the acetate... It's quite time consuming, but they'll be the very last thing installed this time (after the 89th version of the Stone is complete ;) )

The roof, almost finished (well apart from ridge tiles, and flashing adjustments)  Also showing another initial stone base layer on the front elevation

One final bit I managed over the weekend too - you see on the left hand side of the steps, that little white stone cap? Four weeks ago, I knocked the model whilst getting it off the shelf, that stone cap flew off and disappeared..I've only just got round to cutting and gluing on a new one :)

I'm actually driving myself slowly mad with this project, and goodness knows how I'm going to attack the canopies!!! :) But, and this is the important bit, I'm still enjoying it immensely.