I appreciate your interest in my detailing of the subway portals. Here's how I did it. This is my first attempt in making a tutorial so please bare with me.

First I purchased some paint from Michaels Craft store. Dark gray, light gray, tan, green, white, and black. I used a foam brush and two artists brushes, one small (for mortar joints) and one as wide as the stones in the wall (for dry brushing on the final top coat).

The tunnel portals are MTH and cut and fit together to form one wall with three portals.

Originally I was not going to do any detail and spray painted them with Testors gray primer. But not liking the clean look and lack of detail and depth, I decided to do the following. If I was to do this again I would skip the gray primer spray.

Step 1.
Squeeze out all four colors onto a scrap piece of cardboard, foam, etc. anything handy.



Next using the foam brush dab the brush into one color and dab onto portal wall in a random pattern. Do the same for all four colors. Don't be fussy and overlap.




Then using a paper towel dab the portal wall and blend in the colors.


This is what it should look like



Step 2.

Adding color to the mortar joints.
First dilute black paint with water.



Paint on top of mortar joints with diluted paint mixture using small artists brush. Don't worry about getting paint on stones.



This is what it will look like.



Next gently wipe excess diluted black paint from stones, leaving black paint in mortar joints. If you wipe it out of the mortar joint just reapply more paint and wipe off again.



I left a little hint of black on the stone to add more depth.
This what it looks like after the wiping.



Step 3.
Adding highlights to stones.
Squeeze out white and light gray paint onto pallet.



With the larger artists brush, Dip into light gray and wipe off any excess, dab brush on paper towel to remove more paint (dry brushing).



Then apply paint to top of stones using a light touch and random action in you brush strokes. Repeat with both light gray and white until desired affect is achieved.




Step 4.

Detailing cap stones.

Using large artists brush smear on a coat of diluted black paint.


Gently dab off black paint, let dry. few minutes, dab on more diluted black paint with paper towel until desired affect is achieved.



This is what it should look like.



Finished Project


Hope this was an informative post and hope you can use this in some of your detailing work. Different colors could be substituted for different looks. Different color mortar could be used also.

I was a little reluctant in the start to try this this but after the first portal I was glad I did. What a difference it made in the overall look of the portals. I am amazed in how simple some things are. In doing scenery I really don't think you could make a mistake nature isn't perfect.

Thanks
Tracy

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TMM,

Beautiful work! This is a really nice walkthrough on how to make those fantastic portals look their best.

Thanks!

John

Fantastic!!
Thanks, TMM!

Great Job! I like the touch of adding Black for Mortar Joints, never used that before.-Don Klose

A lot of work, but worth it in the end. Great job on both the portals and the tutorial..

Thanx a bunch for sharing!

Great job, Tracy.

Excellent work!

This project is def. one that's getting saved in my little archive!

Very good "how-to" lesson. Simple and thorough. thanks, Dave G.

very nice work tracy! well thought out and easy to follow ... a definite keeper!

That's a great job you did !! Those are really sharp now !! Thanks for the graet write up too, as I have a set of the dble. K-line portals that I will try that on !!
Thanks, John

TMM, talk about timing. I just signed in and was going to do a search on painting foam walls and tunnel portals. I have walls and portals purchased many years apart and my project this week is to make them match and mount them on my layout. Great process and easy to follow your instructions and pictures. Thanks again to Forum members who share. David

Excellent tutorial with great pictures. Thanks a bunch for sharing and taking the time to put it together. As Fish said, "it's a keeper". Great post, Tracy!

David (kgsouth), Please post pictures when you finish the walls and portals.

Appreciate all of your kind comments. I have used much of the ideas posted in this forum for my own layout, so its only fitting to share techniques and ideas I have with you. I enjoyed putting together this tutorial.

By the way bfishma, has contacted me and is in the process of adding this tutorial to this web site
The Token Three Railer
So it won't be lost in the OGR purge.

Thanks
Tracy

thanks for the plug tracy! hope to have a draft up later tonight and will send you a copy for proofing. it really is a great and simple project that has been captured very well by your tutorial. i hate to see this kind of time, effort, and good willed sharing to go to waste as i have seen it time and time again here on the forum. i hope that the blog will be a safe port for these great articles so that others may benefit from them.

please, PLEASE, if you feel like i do about saving valuable posts here on the forum so that others can access them, i humbly encourage you to post here on a thread i started in the suggestion section entitled: S.O.S. Save Our Stuff! every comment will help get the point across that instead of adding another narrow gauge section, the staff should consider providing safe haven for the very posts that keep many coming to their website.

Tracy
Thanks for the detail and walk through for this painting technique. I have been experimenting with making portals with foam so I am going to try this technique. The new idea for me was using the 4 different colors and splotching (sp?) them on then rubbing them together rather than mixing first. A great idea!

just want to call everyone's attention to the latest blog post of TMM's wonderful portal detailing tutorial . thanks tracy for taking the time to post this great how-to and agreeing to showcase it on the token blog!