Brick textures (and maybe some wood) on mdf

[Pocho Azul]

I recently acquired the task of painting some Sarissa Precision, Old West-themed mdf buildings. They are simple, nicely designed, and easy to assemble, but will look a little flat and characterless next to some highly textured resin buildings that I have already painted.

The incised wooden boards have enough depth (I think) that I can paint them adequately, but the incised brick seems too regular and too tightly spaced to ever really resemble bricks. Some examples can be seen here:
link
This is not a building in my to-do list, but the adobe "bricks" are similarly too tight and too regular to look natural, in my opinion. I have come up with solutions for the featureless and flat roofs (arguably the most visible and important part of a model building for gaming) but I am a little stumped on a good way to improve or replace the bricks and, possibly, add some wooden board textures to the inside of some buildings.

The easiest thing would probably be to buy some plastic brick sheets online, glue them on, and paint them. I haven't settled on this yet for a couple reasons--I don't have much in the way of tools or experience in precisely cutting plastic sheets, and I am a little apprehensive about it looking, in the end, like something plastic glued to mdf.

I also looked at brick texture rolling pins. What I can't quite figure out is what those could be used with that wouldn't mostly end up stuck to the roller. Every modelling putty I have ever tried has as much affinity for sticking to my fingers and tools as it does to the model, so I don't quite see how these are supposed to work.

Anyone have experience with these or other solutions?

[Pocho Azul]

OK, well I found out some stuff, so here is an update in case anyone is interested.

The best selection of rollers seems to be from Green Stuff World, which is a bit ironic, as I suspect green stuff might be tricky to use with them (too sticky). They sell a lot of different ones at different scales and styles, but I am most interested in this one. I mostly work at 28mm, but it might do for 20mm as well. They also have some 15mm scale rollers and some of their rollers are less scale-dependent. There are a lot of 3D-printed rollers on Etsy, but most seem a bit chunky for 28mm, at least for something with a common size range like standard building bricks. Those of you with access to 3D printers can find the STL files online and scale them as needed,

Apparently the best material to use with texture rolling pins, or with the silicon molds that kinda do the same job, seems to be polymer clay, like Fimo or Sculpey. I haven't used Sculpey since I was a little kid (a long time ago) but there are a lot of different brands and styles. I haven't looked into the air-dry clay so much, but for the heat-cured clay, Soufflé, which a Sculpey brand, sounds like the best. According to this review, most polymer clays shrink noticeably when baked, except for two--Soufflé and Cernit. Soufflé is alleged (by the company that makes it) to have exceptional flexibility and ability to take detail, and is a lot less expensive than Cernit, abut which I have less info.

I haven't found any good molds or other fancy ideas for adding wood-plank textures to certain blank spots in my mdf buildings, but I did find actual wood, scored to look like planks at several different scales and at not too high a cost.

[C M Dodson]

Interesting stuff and I see what you mean about the bricks.

For my planking I paint the wood and then score the plank lines in which seems to work.

I am with you when it comes to modelling clay, it sticks like glue.

However, if you visit Gerschite in Miniturian you will see that Wolfgang has used it very successfully in the Rourkes Drift project and this may be your answer.

Best wishes,

Chris