30/08/2017

A Scottish castle - part two

Well, I must admit, I really enjoyed the painting on this one. Took a bit longer than I first thought but I wanted to get the tones right. At around the start of the 1400's the UK (as it is now) was entering a little ice age so I wanted to get a more 'autumnal' feel to the groundwork and I think I've pulled it off.

Onto the pictures, not many more words to say apart from the fact I'll be starting on a smaller base with a stables on it next for this commission.






















29/08/2017

A Scottish castle - part one

This is a wip post but it's not far off from being done now.

I think I'll be doing more wip posts in the future, the reason being is that Photobucket stopped third party hosting unless an extortionate fee is paid. I won't be and seeing as I don't frequent the LAF as often now I thought it would be good to have a place where most of my projects get some recording.

The castle was commissioned by David Imrie who is a splendid painter and jolly nice chap :-)

The brief was to have a Scottish borders tower castle similar to Portencross Castle as shown below.



A stables block was also requested which is still very wip at the moment. It had to be separate but also butt up against the castle base, there will be some magnets in some removable walls top allow the two to be joined together.

The main body was formed from foamcore and the quoins were styrene strip of varying sizes. David decided that rendered walls would be best so a suitable mixture was concocted and applied over the blank sections of the walls.

The merlons were made from a material called chemiwood which is a resin compound and is very machinable. These were stuck on in fairly regular intervals and the render was applied up to them.

The main part of the roof was flat using Wills sheets but there was also a small pitched roof on top to allow access. David bases his figures on 20 rounds so there was enough room around the pitch to allow figures.

It has now been primed and painting will commence this week along with making a proper start on he stables.






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26/08/2017

A journey to the Empire - Building 2

I'm pleased that I still have the impetus to carry on with these as I'm sure most of you know, there is a habit to move onto new, shinier things :-)

The idea with this one (as with the ones to come) is the same, tart them up and finish them to an acceptable standard and then eventually (fingers crossed) have a game or two.

This one, like the first, was started in 2004 when I had a larger session of starting lots of buildings with a view to making an Empire city, pictures of which is below. Unfortunately, moving house and needing to reduce the amount of 'stuff' meant that most of the city walls went in the bin but I kept a few items and will quite possibly have a look at doing something similar in the future.





Again, the construction was from card and balsa with the addition of a plastic hemisphere for the dome. There wasn't much left to do on this one fortunately, just a few bits of balsa, roof ridges and some detail on the dome and flat roof.

Painting was in the same style as the first and I've written down the basic colours used as my memory isn't what it used to be but there should be enough variation in the colours to make it look different.

















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24/08/2017

Tiny orchard

Just a little post today of a tiny orchard for some Peninsular gaming that I've been 'pressured' into joining.

A simple base, around 210mm square with some pre-bought trees drilled in a regular pattern, some typical groundwork and Bob's your uncle.



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23/08/2017

A bit of a change.

Nothing to worry about, in fact it'll be something to welcome hopefully.

I've decided to catalogue the vast majority of my builds, projects and hobby related goings on here, which means there has been a little bit of a make over (not too much) but plenty of wips, games, finished models and OSHIRO releases to come for your viewing pleasure :-)

The intention is to have three or four posts a week but of course it depends on what I get done!

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22/08/2017

A little vignette

A few years ago I took part in a friendly little competition which was a figure swap one. Everybody who took part put a single figure into a box and took one out from random (obviously putting back their own). I was fortunate enough to get the chap below and decided to make a scenic base for him to stand on.

It's a mix of bits box bits and styrene all put together in a suitable way. Given a muted colour palette and weathered appropriately it only took a couple of hours from start to finish.









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