Project Roundup July

Bit of a random blog today I’m afraid, not had a lot of time this weekend for model work, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to round up where some of the projects are at.

Castle Ruins

Not much advanced this month, although the main piece has now had the last of the exterior walls finished, by that I mean covered in wall filler and marked out. There is a small amount of interior work to be completed and some under side work before I start painting. The tunnel entrance way is still undercoated black with no further development. Once the main piece has caught up I’ll paint them all up together.

I’ve been having a rummage in some old boxes, and discovered two things of interest. One piece which comes under this category of ruins is a plastic model piece of aches and windows, which BigLee passed over to me a number of years ago, having decided it wasn’t quite right for the battle table he was putting together and wondered what I could do with it. I think it looked just too plastic, and was really just a front piece, being that it was not even finished on both sides. I tried filling it and painting it, but couldn’t quite get a result either – it went into the ‘deal with this later’ box.  This is how it looks now, I’m going to see what I can do to bring it to life - watch this space.

Scenic Layout

Whilst rummaging I also pulled out a small hillside that I remember making with dad when I was a kid for the model train set. This went into the far corner of the board to make the layout look like it was in a small valley. It was built on a chicken wire frame, covered in sack cloth and papier-mâché, and then painted. It’s suffered a bit over time; I think it’s time it got freshened up and incorporated into my current fantasy layout.

Miltonburg Town

Speaking of the layout, I took some time this month to lay out the larger houses and village pub which I recently built along with some figures and tables which I had built from coffee sticks some time ago for another campaign. This campaign saw me furnish an entire inn interior from bar, stairs, tables, fireplace and bedrooms. Most of the small pieces have survived to be used again. 

Whilst I’m on the subject of my fictional town Miltonburg, a small amount of work has been added to Zandina’s townhouse. 

The baseboard for the pub that got a good soaking thanks to the stormy weather we had a few weeks ago is currently under attempted repair. 

Originally I had cut two sides of the Sol box (see previous posting) and stuck them together twisted at 90 degrees to each other so that the grain of the corrugated cardboard went across each piece, this I had hoped would give the base more stability when gluing on it, to prevent it curling up – but I think the amount of rain has banished any hope of a perfectly flat base.  I’ve re-glued the base and it’s currently being held together. We’ll see.

Town Houses Paint Work

I can’t believe it, the last time I featured the town houses they were very much in their naked just built stage. I’ve not shown them for a while and they are practically finished, that kind of crept up on me. I think it was because I was doing the paint work at odd times during the evenings.

Ok, the paint job. First step was a spray with GW’s Skull White. Then I gave the main areas a base coat, black acrylic on the wood work, and the Americana Decoart Acrylic Butter, on the walls. 

The roof tiles were given a coating of black acrylic then a coating of orange & black mix to give it the terracotta look. Once this was done I then set about painting the top layer. White on the walls, but I allowed the butter to show through around the edges to give an aged effect. 

The wood work was given a coat of the Galeria Ivory Black. Then I stippled the orange over the tiles to brighten then up. I used a mix of white and black to make a light grey for the chimneys. 

I used pieces of the plastic covered with black fruit netting for the windows. I need to touch a couple of these up where the netting hasn’t gone down correctly. I’ll do this over the next few days.

The doors were painted with Galeria Ivory Black, Burnt Umber and Raw Sienna.

I’ve set up a few Miltonburg scenes with some characters; looking at these old figures I think they are in need of a bit of refreshing themselves.

The first three figures

Karl, his grandmother Zandina and his father Max.

The Karl figure was originally a second Adric figure I bought from the FASA  Dr Who game. It underwent some modification with a large sword being added to his back, which can't be seen in this picture. 

Zandina was the Romana figure from the same set.

Max - I don’t remember where this figure originally came from, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Town Houses

Lincoln as Inspiration

Here are a few photos taken last year in Lincoln. These show some of the old style timber frame buildings which I’m aiming to achieve in look for my medieval houses. 

This is going to be the style of most of the buildings that I’ve used in the book Karl – Birth of Mystery.

In my previous posting I showed a couple of buildings which I’ve been working on, these are a couple of general buildings.

I’m also going to add a few more buildings based on the book from the main town that features in the book, these are a tavern (“The Ship & Hankor”), a row of narrow shops (which will include “Axilion Trade”), and a larger than average house where Karl’s grandmother (Zandina) lives when in town and practicing her medicinal skills.

I’ve started to build Zandina’s house, already. I have the basic foam board shell, and I’ve added two toilet rolls on the front to form bay fronts. I’ve been trying to work out what I could do with the inside tubes from toilet rows for some time.

In these two tubes I put two folds in to flatten one side in each in order to stick them to the building, then folded down the tops to form pointed attic rooms. 

Project Round Up

I thought I’d give a quick round up of some of the projects I’ve been working on. I realised that it’s been a while since I posted anything about the castle ruins. These have been taking a bit of a back seat recently but haven’t been forgotten. So to make up for it, I’ll start with them.

Castle Ruins

The entrance way got a bit damaged a couple of weeks ago when some of the model work got caught out in the rain, we had torrential rain all of a sudden, and I just couldn’t get everything back inside in time. It had been under coated with black paint – some of this has been damaged and it will need to be undercoated again before I start getting the colouring done.

The ruined room piece fared better. 

This has now had the flagstone floor put down, in the same way as I did on the rest of the project, wall filler with stone pattern cut into it before it dries. 

I’ve also worked on the steps leading up to the room.  All I need to do now (I say all, but it’s still quite a bit) are the external walls and the under passage.

Thatched Cottages.

There were two unfinished thatched cottages from older projects that I set out to finish. One is done, and you’ve seen recently. The other where the chimney had to be cutaway and rebuilt has now been under coated, the basic thatch painted – although I experimented with the colouring on this and I’m not too sure I’m happy. I’ll go into that more in my next blog. I’ve also base painted the wood and the chimney. Although the other cottages have wood work which is wood coloured I’m debating with this one whether to go for the black wood finish. Any thoughts?

Town Houses.

In a recent posting I mentioned finding the old White Dwarf magazines, and I included a photo of the town house I had built from their plans.

I started to build some larger wood framed town houses a while ago, based on photos I had taken and again these got shelved. I dug these out and I’ve also been working to complete them.

You can see from this photo one was more advanced than the other.

Both now have their wood frames completed, and have been plastered up. You’ll see from the early photo that I had tiled the roof – this was a mistake, I should not have done this before completing the frame work, the tiles do not lap over the edge properly. 

(There is a reason I had done this, but it is outside the scope of this blog). 

Now I have had to add the chimneys on after, these are pieces of foam board stuck together with a V shape cut out to fit over the roof, then covered in wall plaster. 

The tiles I am having to lift and insert new edge tiles and an additional row at the bottom, a bit tricky but with a sharp knife and some patience I should get there. 

The sides I’m sticking on additional tiles, once the glue is dry and they have set then I will trim the tiles so that there is a straight edge. 

The tiles are all in the same style as taught by the old White Dwarf articles, small squares cut from cereal packets.

Karl – Birth of Mystery

The prologue is available to read by clicking through from the page on the right. Thanks to those that have pre-ordered. 

As soon as the book is back from the printers any copies ordered through the link on this page to the publisher’s website will be signed up and posted as priority. 

I’ll let you know when they have been sent out.