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Ivy Covered Walls -- test piece for Gibbard Furniture Journals/Blogs
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Super User 164 posts Gregory Latiak GLatiak Super User 164 posts
Gregory Latiak GLatiak

One of the endearing features of the old Gibbard Furniture factory in Napanee is the ivy covering much of the western wall. Old photos of the building show this same feature. So for the highly compressed Gibbard building on my layout, an ivy covered wall was highly desired. Never done that before... so I made a test piece using a spare painted wall casting from the build:

1_093717.jpg 

Vines are heavy thread soaking in dilute white glue and laid out on the wall. White glue was blotted on the wall in places where foliage was to go. Random sprinkles of two different sizes of ground foam followed by a light spritz of scenic cement.

Gregory Latiak

Please read my blog
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tjlawler Active Member 44 posts
tjlawler

Nicely Done

The vine(s) look great. But, maybe you should have weathered the brick wall first? It just looks way too clean and uniform.

 

Tom
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Wabash Banks Regular poster 471 posts
Wabash Banks

Great job!

Great job! We have a couple of buildings around here with that kind of vine growth. I will say that while some of it looks just like yours, much is even more bushy. So much so that it crowds in around windows so they are no longer square looking. Also, there are usually quite a few birds nesting in them... I love the thread use as the vine. It is a fine effort!
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Rick Sutton Prolific poster 4,358 posts
Rick Sutton

Thread

Brilliant!
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Jackh Prolific poster 2,042 posts
Jackh

Looks Good

Ivy looks good, but the wall does need some weathering also. I can also tell you from experience that Ivy can grow over the top of the wall and be really thick at the top. Had a temp job once to pry ivy off an industrial building cement wall. Stuff was about a foot deep at the top and rapidly going across the roof headed for the other side.

Jack 
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JC Shall Prolific poster 1,491 posts
JC Shall

It's a Test

Why weather the wall if it's just a test piece for a technique?  I'm fairly sure the walls on the actual structure would get weathered first before applying the vines.

-Jack

Louisiana Central Railroad

The Louisiana Central Blog
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Russ Bellinis Prolific poster 3,335 posts
Russ Bellinis

Looks food so far.

I think the foliage on Ivy would start right at the dirt rather than having bare trunk up to the level of the first window. For a practice piece, it looks perfect.

A second thought, if you are modeling a wall that has had ivy growing on it for 5 years or more, you probably don't need to weather the brick, because the only place that you will actually see the brick is around the windows & doors where the Ivy has been cleared away.  If you ever watch a baseball game played at Wrigley Field can you even tell that the wall is brick? 
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