Alessio's Pizzeria

This is Alessio's Pizzeria. You can purchase this kit here.

Product Description and Painting Details
by Ken Litko

The laser cut wood parts in this kit give it a detail that you can't get with resin or plastic models. With the right painting techniques, the bricks "jump out" and look like you actually built this kit one brick at a time. We started out by spraying the entire assembled kit in a red primer. From there, we do a quick sanding (400 grit) to remove the "fuzzies" from the initial coat, then recoated with primer. Over these two thin coats, we spray our "base" coat of brick color... in this case, a light gray.

Have you noticed that nice roof yet? All we did was basecoat it. No drybrushing, no nothing. Looks good doesn't it? Nice cornicing one might say! Back to the rest of the building... After basecoating the brick walls, we used a hefty combination of drybrushing, dampbrushing (see the note below), and wetbrushing. There are approximately seven layers of paint on this model using these techniques. As you can see, some punks tagged the building... we're just happy they kept the language clean.

You can see two major things in this picture. The first is the "bucket" rooftop. We finished this with a simple, quick "swoosh" brushing with a dark gray paint. You can easily paint the inside wall of the bucket without accidentally brushing the top of the cornice because there is a short inward lip designed into the cornice. Secondly, you can see the wraparound sidewalk. We painted the sidewalk to have a blue pastel glow. This is the result of approximately 7 to 10 layers of paint and a quick score with a metal tool. We started with dampbrushing, drybrushing, regular brushing, and a few well placed artisic strokes of darker colors along the edges and centers or blocks (to simulate concrete repair). We then carefully scored the laser marked sidewalk with a flat-tipped screwdriver to deepen the "blocks". We applied a second round of the same techniques, finishing off with a very light drybrushing of an off-white. The colors that you use to finish the sidewalk are not so important as the layering. Case in point... our sidewalk is pastel blue! You can easily finish this in a yellow-cream or off-white to simulate typical "real" colors.

After putting in all our dampbrushed and drybrushed details, we wetbrushed the walls using black paint. We made sure to make it an uneven coat so that the brickwork looks variegated. When wetbrushing, individual bricks fairly evenly soak up the color, which makes for the unique appearance of the wood model that we originally started talking about (resin and plastic don't do this very well). The concrete details surrounding the windows were painted last using a simple off-white paint. As with the cornice, it looks fine with one simple coat. We would advise to use thick paint on the window details and to spread it unevenly so that it dries with some regions (on individual window bricks) appearing higher or deeper than others.

Dampbrushing: Dampbrushing is not a painting term you hear too much about. It is a very good technique for applying "grime" to a surface. This is our explanation of the technique as used here. Start out with a natural fiber brush like camel hair. The reason that you want a natural fiber brush is because natural fibers will soak up water and be very pliable. You also want your brush to be short (about 1/4 inch), broad (about 1/2 inch), and stiff (we're not sure how to measure that!). Dunk the brush in water and leave it there for a while (15 minutes or so). Take out the brush and dry it off. Dip the tip of the brush in the paint that you will be using and get the paint thoroughly soaked through the fibers of the brush by brushing the color out on a piece of paper. Paper is absorbent, but not too absorbent, so your keeping a good deal of the moisture... a rag will dry it out too much. Quickly dip the brush fibers halfway into clean water. On a fresh piece of paper, remove most of the water, by brushing it out again. Your goal is to get a brush stroke that will lay down a layer of translucent color when you paint. Note that this is not wetbrushing, you want a brush that will spread color, not soak your model. This is your dampbrush. Apply paint to the model with even pressure. To imperceptively fan out color, use very low pressure.

Here you can see an illustration of this technique. This is shot of the back door on Alessio's Pizzeria. The grime that you see below the "Deliveries" sign, the building corners, and here and there on the wall is done using this technique. By the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, click on the picture at left to get a larger image.

Some Details of the Kit: Alessio's Pizzeria has the following dimensions: the base is 7.9 inches wide, by 10.6 inches long. This four story building stands 10.4 inches tall, 5.5 inches wide, and 8.25 inches long. Floors can be removed or added as desired... That means that you can easily move figures in and out of this kit! This makes for interesting line of sight problems in urban wargames. Kits can be combined to yield taller buildings. Modifications such as different signs and blown out walls are available.

Assembly is required, painting is optional but recommended. That is why we wrote this article after all! This kit is composed of 95 laser-cut wood parts (36 of which are the cornice pieces) and requires slow epoxy (20 to 30 minute) for assembly. CA is recommended for temporarily bonding parts.

We're happy to take suggestions for mods to this kit. Email them to us at cust_serv@litkoaero.com.

You can purchase this kit here