Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Book Review: Create Exterior Finishes by Bea Broadwood

Much as a I love working with plasticard on model building exteriors, I look at the work of people like Iain Robinson and think perhaps I could be trying something a little different. There's a bit of me that is itching to find a project suitable for some scribed stonework for example.

Before this, I like to swot up on the techniques involved and like so many people who own a shelf full of cookbooks and still order takeaways, I've plenty of "how too" literature and lots of plastic sheet.

New to me is the company Petite Properties . To date they have worked in the dolls house scales of 1:16 and 1:24 but are now producing kits in 4 and 7mm scales.

Bea Broadwood is an architectural illustrator so has the background to care that the models look right and the skills to ensure they do. Chatting to her at Warley last weekend, she grew frustrated that most dolls houses are used as display cabinets for miniature furniture - every room is perfect but when you shut the front it's back to the world of giant-sized brickpaper.

Reasoning that the exterior should be as good as the interior, she has developed techniques to model all sorts of surface finishes simply and cheaply. This book is the result.

After covering scales and tools, the book cracks on with chapters on bricks, renders, stone, timber and roofing. These are divided to cover a variety of finishes and methods of creating them. You get three options for brickwork - card bricks, clay bricks and scribing. On the roof we have three pantile methods and also 6 different techniques for tiles.

Everything is comprehensively illustrated in full colour with step-by-step guides. Although this is a self-published book, A5 in size and with 92 pages - it's jam-packed with information.

Most of the techniques look like they will work in railway scales too. None of them use anything more expensive than air-drying clay or couscous. Mostly were in a world of cardboard, another joy when so much of the time we are encouraged to spend on specialist products.

Create Exterior Finished is available from Petite Properties for £11.99

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