How to paint castle bricks

In this article, we’re going to show you how to paint castle bricks, like the ones seen in the Throne & Ash models. The techniques shown are simple, easy, and will achieve great tabletop results. Let’s get started.

For this guide, you’ll need the following:

• Throne & Ash models are printed and ready to go
• Skeleton bone primer (we used a pot of colour matched acrylic from our local hardware store, but the Army Painter primer can is great and easy to use, we just had supply issues at the time of painting for the amount of bricks we had to paint)
• Vallejo sepia wash
• Vallejo black wash (thinned 50/50 with water)
• Ammo Light sand dry paint
• Citadel Wyldwood contrast
• Vallejo German Camo Pale brown
• A large wash brush
• A large dry brush

For this tutorial we’ll just use a simple 180 HEX Castle Wall, but the techniques used in this tutorial is how we painted all the bricks and wood across all of Throne & Ash.

The first step is to prime the model. We applied the pot of Skeleton bone paint with a large brush directly over the model, and again for the proper coverage, for two coats. If you’re using the spray can, then prime till the colour is opaque and consistent.

The next step is to do an all-over wash with the Sepia, straight out of the pot. We applied this with a large brush and let the wash pool on bricks occasionally to get a nice variety of tones. If you like this look, you can leave the bricks here and skip to the drybrush stage.

Next, we carefully applied some of the thinned black wash to a random number of bricks. The trick here is to avoid making any patterns, lines, or shapes with the contrasting black wash.

We repeat this process using the same sepia wash to get a deeper tone on a random number of bricks, further adding variance to the tone of our castle bricks.

Once the washes are dry, we can move on to a dry brush with the Ammo Light sand. This is a good paint for dry brushing. We prefer a flat brush for this technique, always keeping the brush strokes downwards, just catching the top and side edges of the bricks to simulate natural light and dust settling.

Because our wooden planks are light in colour, this is the perfect opportunity to use a contrast paint or similar paint. We used a single coat of Wyldwood paint on the planks.

The last step is a quick dry brush of the German Camo Pale brown over the planks. We have our brush a bit more loaded than typical dry brushing, but we drag it gently over the planks to catch those raised edges. We do this a few more times across the centre portion of the planks to simulate where people would tread more often, adding more wear to the wood.

And there you have it, a simple guide for painting castle bricks. You can use this method for all the Throne & Ash models, and since there are millions of bricks in a castle, you’ll be a pro in no time.