Having built the majority of the structures for the NES I realized that I still hadn’t figured out how to address the roofs. I wanted to shingle the roofs with regular asphalt shingles, but I was struggling to find a suitable tutorial on how to do so – most modellers seeming to prefer tarpaper roofs to shingles – tarpaper being easier to model prototypically as individual asphalt shingles are microscopically small. I found that there were laser cut shingles available from different manufacturers but their cost was higher then I was willing to pay. I decided that I would attempt to create printed shingles and see how they looked. I found a number of shingle textures online (textures are the term for images which are geared for use in 3d) and created a seamless tile of shingles in various colours, including a ridge cap. I printed the shingles on sheets of premium coated bond paper and set to work carefully cutting and attaching the sheets to the roofs of two of my structures – the signal tower and one of the houses. I first applied a coat of dark gray paint to the roof to serve as an adhesive, and then carefully pressed the paper shingles into the still-wet paint. I trimmed the excess paper, and carefully blacked-out the white paper edge with a pencil. I was really pleased with the result; the roofs had a convincing shingle pattern! There were a few spots where some of the paint had seeped out under the edges of the paper and created small ‘shiny’ spots – resembling large swaths of tar. I decided to spray each of the structures with some dullcote, and disaster struck. The dullcote dulled the paper and added a chalky film that completely obscured the shingle pattern, leaving only a light gray roof. I was tempted to pitch the houses into the garbage in frustration; however, the light gray roofs were not unconvincing as they seem to be realistically weathered. I’ve decided that I would keep the structures and will try again. My options at this point are either to create shingle print-outs that have unrealistic contrast, in hopes of offsetting the dulling qualities of the spray or to apply the shingles and not seal them. The latter may cause problems when it comes time to apply weathering, as I will either have to apply the roofs as the very last step or mask the roofs to avoid changing the colour.
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On the bright side, the dullcote on paper did create a rather realistic and instant weathering effect that might work well in other applications! Stay tuned!
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