5.1. Corner Buildings
Model
These businesses got their start courtesy of a building from the Jersey City Industrial that was never used, and had just the right angle to fit the redesigned streets. It's paired with a storefront left over from the abandoned Downtown Southwest Stockton arrangement. I chose to tackle these after having finished Stock Tower and Dave's Auto Repair, as I wanted to stick with smaller buildings while I continued developing my new-ish modeling techniques.
After distressing some of the brickwork and fascia parts, I applied brick color and mortar effects. The taller building received Floquil Boxcar Red, the other Floquil Red Oxide Primer. This was followed by white artist's gouache thinned with water and alcohol. The mortar effect took several tries to get right, but since gouache remains water-soluble after it dries, changes are a simple matter of washing it off and trying again. However, a flat clear coat is needed to protect the gouache from dissolving when the graffiti decals are applied. I filled in most of the windows and doors with micro-ply stained with India ink and orange gouache washes, then I took a break.
The remaining steps were to finish the roofs, board up the storefronts, add the fire escape, and finally apply graffiti.
The guys at The Railwire really liked it a lot.
Reference
The model was finished loosely following these (and other) reference images:
To the left of the taller building will be a small empty wedge of useless land, which will look substantially similar to this one:
Searching for "rooftop graffiti" yielded thousands of hits. Curiously, for the most part the roofs themselves were surprisingly clean, regardless of how much graffiti there was.
