1:35 Brick wall with pillars & plain roof tiles (12,5 cm x 6,5 cm)

Plain tiles above a brick wall

Flat clay tiles, known as beaver-tail tiles, covered roofs in Central and Western Europe for centuries and differ from the southern barrel tile in shape and in the way they are laid. Anyone building a scene from Normandy, from the Rhineland or from a Czech or Polish village will reach for just these. The waviness of a southern covering would send the scene a thousand kilometers elsewhere and a knowledgeable eye would see it at once.

The segment measures twelve and a half centimeters wide and six and a half high and is made up of a brick panel, two posts and a row of plain tiles on the top of the masonry. The bricks are cast with the irregularities that arise in hand-laid work, so the surface does not come across as machine-made.

A raw surface

The casting is not given a base layer. That allows freedom in the choice of color procedure and in further work on the texture, because the surface can be gently sanded, have mortar from modeling paste added or be roughened in places. Once dust is cleaned off, the usual base follows according to the builder's habits.

It is also worth mentioning how a flat tile behaves in painting. The individual pieces overlap, so a dense net of shadow lines arises between them, into which a wash runs by itself and creates a natural transition. A dry brush then need only be led along the upper edges and the covering gains volume without its being necessary to work one tile at a time.

The suitable scale is 1:35. The element serves as a structural backdrop and is ready for joining with further segments, if the wall is to be longer than one piece.