Painting Brick with Monroe Stewart

Modeler Monroe Stewart has a special way of making brick structures look just right. His secret is to not rush or be in a hurry. His technique was taught to him a long time ago from a friend named Lee. He actually paints each brick individually. Monroe demonstrates on a building. Initially it is painted with a light color wash. The color Sand from Polly Scale covers the entire building with a brush.

This could also be airbrushed on, but he uses airbrushes rarely. He usually attacks everything with a spray can, his technique being dubbed the Monroe brush. Next he takes the Tuscan color with a flat brush and dabs most of the paint off on a piece of cloth. The brush should be almost dry. The idea is to touch just the flat part of the brush on the masonry so it only touches the brick detail that is protruding. This way, the sand color with appear as the mortar joint and Tuscan will appear as the brick. If a spot is missed, he has some contingencies.

Lee originally was doing this in HO scale, which is how Monroe learned it. In N scale it is not too difficult and is very effective. After everything is covered with Tuscan, there are still a lot of bare spots on the brick. Monroe takes a red and treats it the same as the Tuscan color and dry brushes it onto the sparse spots on the facade.

Even though not nearly as much red is used, it creates some variation. The red applies even quicker than the tuscan. He then repeats the step with the red in a engine black paint, even more sparsely than the red. He is not so much painting the bricks on as he is dabbing them. Monroe goes on to discuss his philosophy on modeling.

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