SYW Buildings WIP (4)

Well, they're completed. The final stages were painting the hardboard base grey and then washing it and the terracotta roof black to bring out the texture. The slate roof was a bit to strong so I dry brushed it with a pale blue/grey instead. The linka wall was was washed in brown ink, but it was one of those surfaces where the ink spreads evenly rather than gathering in the cracks (I wish I could work out in advance which paints do this)

The doors were painted, then a bit of detail added with a fine pen.

What would I do differently next time? The windows have come out rather too blue, this is despite using the same blue as previous buildings, it was the scrim for the frame that took a much lighter dry brushing than the old embroidery frame. So I'll use a darker blue next time.

Will

SYW Buildings WIP (3)

Well, painting is now well underway, after the basecoat the windows were painted blue then dry brushed with to bring out the frames. The roof for this building was painted terracota to represent tiles (the other building will be blue slate). Then the hard slog painting the timber frame, done with a thinned down GW scotched brown.


The frames have to be done in stages to avoid smudging etc

Will

Frundsberg is back

After 30 years the units of the Frunsberg Frei Stadt have seen daylight again. My father found the figures in a remote corner of the attic.



I'm not sure what to do with them, but given the number of other blogs being set up covering various ficticious states I have set up a blog for them where I will post all my memories of their campaigns, etc.

See http://frundsbergfs.blogspot.com/ for details

Will

SYW Buildings WIP (2)

The roofs are now completed and a base coat of paint applied. Two slightly different colour emulsions were used and these will be the colour of the plaster

Will

SYW Buildings WIP (1)

I've been asked how I construct my buildings, so I thought it would be useful to take a couple of pictures of the latest buildings while they are in progress.

The underlying basis for all the buildings is a base which is made up of 60mm by 60mm grid, in the case of the SYW town all the buildings are on 120mm square bases. The origin of these dimensions is in my AWI rules where the figures are on 45mm square bases, so the buildings bad to have an internal dimension (to take the figures comfortably) of 50mm by 100mm so the base for the buildings was 60mm x 120mm.


The basic structure for the walls is foamcore, cut to size and rebated at the corners for neatness and avoiding the need to cover the outside surface to hide the inner foam edge. Once the basic structure is completed I add a card roof with tiles cut in strips and overlapped. The chimneys are just balsa cut to size. For the windows and doors I have been quite lazy and just glued them onto the walls. Originally I used some windows left over from some plastic kits, then a plastic embroidery grid and my latest discovery the scrim used by plasterers to cover joins before plastering. These buildings are the first using this technique.

The buildings are also embellished in a number of ways, these are quite extreme as I have glued thin card all over the surface to give a timber framed effect. The base of the second building has been made out of Linka (reinforced with foamcore) to give a different effect.

Will

On the workbench (June)

Not much to report really, having finished the Visigoths I'm in a bit of a painting lull no being sure what to do next. This is partly because Phalanx and Gauntlet are coming up at the end of the month and I will probably stock up on more goodies then. This will include some more Waterloo 1815 Egyptian figures so that I have enough for my Senegalese. Even though this mean I will have far too many General Gordons (8)

In the meantime I have continued work on the two remaining SYW buildings I need and I'll probably do some tidying up work on my Napoleonic Prussians. Then depending on the time left I may construct a couple of North African buildings that I had sketched out a while ago.

Will

15mm Visigoths are done at last

Well at last I have finished the Visigoths. They were originally purchased from Chariot Miniatures as a project for my older daughter who wanted something paid for to do. Given my club used to play a lot of DBM I thought this would kill two birds with one stone. Some chance! At least my daughter assembled most of the figures before getting bored and then going off to university.

So here's the whole army

The Nobles(Kn)

Gardingi (Cv) behind, Archers(Bw) and Warband(Wb) in front

The Archers(Bw) and Warband(Wb), with more archers (Ps) in front

The rest of the Warband with coffin shields and archers(Ps) in front

Of course having painted the army I now find it need more figures to round it out so I can use it, so I need to get more warband and cavalry, plus the baggage, which is never included in any army pack.

The good news was that they are not as difficult to paint as I suspected, but new brushes and some reading glasses helped a lot

Will