We use Canson paper, spray mounted to chip board or foamcore.
Your art supply store should have it. You can get it in a brown or sepia color.

or just print out a sketchup texture on to paper, trim and stick.

our university bookstore in undergrad had something similar ( sounds like, anyway) to irishtom's suggestion...basically a nice thick museum board with an outside layer of deep-reddish brick colored paper. next we would draft up a brick texture in AutoCad, and send that to the laser cutter at low power so it would *just barely* score the surface, and left tiny dark burnt grout lines. it's very convincing, yet subtle. we then would affix this to some foam core as the interior wall (nice, because the two layers of thick stuff meant no bubbles) and there ya go.

cool. thanks y'all... btw: do you cut the parts and then affix the colored or textured printout or do you do it to the little individual pieces as necessary?

Make up the material, then cut it out. Mitre the corners if you wish.
Also, another way to make up the material is to use Krylon paint on chipboard. Just dust the chipboard with the spray paint until you have the color you like.

Use corrugated paper at the appropriate scale - looks like corrugated siding - except flatten it with a roller. You don't need the vertical joints represented - best left at one level of abstraction. Models with too literal representation look like half-ass model railroading buildings.

Oh yeah, after flattening, score the back (without cutting) and bend around corners as much as possible - that model will look SWEET!

i'd second the krylon...make the piece out of chip board and
then paint it...then sand it down to get the effect you're looking
for. it'll represent brick well enough...and you won't have to do
a bunch of mitering/worry about paper warping etc.

with a couple sanded coats it will basically be like you applied
plaster to chipboard..but without the mess.

what about using a photo of bricks and lazer cut it onto basswood? if cut as a raster file, you can get different tones on the bricks.

I would go a tad more abstract than that... build with whatever's easiest/cleanest for you, and then gesso it. It'll end up with a nonspecific 'masonry' sort of look, and be more about differentiating materials so that it doesn't turn into something that looks like a cartoon.

ok. great suggestions all... thanks very much. upon consideration, it IS more about differentiating materials i guess, than achieving the perfect brick look.

what i got today to use: chipboard and a brick colored conte + a brick colored oil pastel. then i'll apply an acrylic gesso over the top to achieve that nonspecific look, yes.

to everyone else who chipped in: thanks. i'll try those things as time goes on, however on this one, time is of the essence, so heigh-ho heigh-ho...

will gesso stick to oil pastel or conte?
you may want to test it before building anything...
jmo, but that's gonna get really messy...

will test. good point... less messy than charcoal though. conte is crayon-like. oil pastel may indeed be a problem though.

When I model brick or another modular masonry form/wall, I typically do not worry so much about the brick being to scale. I typically rip and then cross-cut a ton of cherry wood blocks, and glue them together in a running bond pattern. I like to use a tung oil on the cherry wood blocks. Warning, this is very time consuming.

Even though the "bricks" are not to scale, I feel that this method produces a model which is at once an analogue for the built form and a full scale artifact in its own right (with its own material qualities).

Good luck.

hahaha. tyvek i lay in bed last night considering something like that too. then i came to my senses. i'm a brutally slow modeller. my fellow students would graduate by the time i was done with that process! :)

It even is worse at larger scales when I glue a strip of chipboard between each block to get a shadow line.

Only done that once though.

you don't want to model brick, son. you want to model masonry texture.

Lars and I know a great trick from undergrad...Transferring an image from a laser jet printer or copier. Here's how:

1. Go down to your local art supply store and buy a "Blender" marker - ChartPak makes the best.

2. Create brick pattern line drawing (thin lineweight) at the appropriate scale in CAD program of your choice and print it out on a laser jet printer (ink jet won't work)

3. Place printout of image face down on your "wall" and secure it with drafting tape.

4. "Color" the back of the image with the blender marker.

5. While the ink is still wet (it dries out fast and gets you high), transfer the image to your "wall" by rubbing hard on the image with the marker cap.

6. After the ink dries, remove the printout - Booyah! You've just transferred the brick pattern to your chipboard, bass wood, etc.

Sounds complicated, but honestly it takes like 5 seconds and looks great. The blender marker pretty much "reactivates" the toner and allows you to transfer it. Liquid acetone may do the trick although it may get everything too wet and messy. Depending on the printer, the ink may not transfer very well, so you may want to run your printout thru a b/w copier (Copier toner sometimes works better & provides a better & darker transfer). This technique also works for putting scale figures, cars, trees, lettering etc. onto drawings...

krylon and mini/random score lines........

never tried this, but if you're bored try:

1. use 4 ply museum board.[/b] (4 ply museum board = 1/16 inch = about 3 inches at 1/4" scale; it's a bit thin, but close enough to the 3 5/8" depth for the brick (3 1/2" norwegian brick)... or try finding something a tiny it thicker.

2. laser cut custom pieces to form the exact dimensions of your object... you can mitre the edges carefully later to glue the pieces together seamlessly so that pattern edges match up; laser etch deep grout lines according to the brick pattern

3. once you have the pieces glued solid, perfectly on mitred edges, use graphite powder to completely cover the object... then dust off... the graphite powder should make thee whole thing metalicky grey, especially in the laser cut cracks of the laser etched pattern... this won't look great yet, because the grout and the brick will be the same uniform color...

4. after dusting it off lightly to remove loose graphite, use a clean eraser and erase the whole surface... you will be able to erase most of the surface graphite, but it will still leave a stained textured surface... but don't erase too much: if the laser etched grooves are deep enough, the graphite in the cracks should stick more than on the surface making the grout lines dark while the brick surfaces are dirty white...

5. once you get the effect you want, whitish brick with dark grout, spray it with 3M fixative to keep it that way...

never tried it, but might look cool... like whitish brick with a darker grout... the only thing is that maybe if you make too deep etches with the laser cutter the museum board might lose its rigidity... maybe you could stabilize it by cutting out a back face in a very thin but strong material that will make up the extra 1/2" of depth of brick and gluing it to the inside face...