Building Materials and References

The old German town of Soldau, located in present-day Poland.

Building Materials
I’m not a total packrat, but I have saved and stored a few boxes worth of stuff that is useful for wargaming scenery over the years. I’ve also purchased a few other inexpensive items when and as I’ve needed them. Here's a brief list of the things used to create my own old school "Grantian" buildings and houses:

*Heavy card from the back of writing and artist’s sketch pads (I'm embarrassed to mention how much of this I've saved over the years).
*Balsa wood
*Elmer’s carpenter’s glue
*Acrylic or poster paints
*Steel ruler
*Small carpenter’s square
*X-acto knife and plenty of standard triangular blades
*Cheap paintbrushes
*Black Sharpie or Flair permanent marker of felt tip pen
*A little imagination and handiness

References
The first thing you need to do is to find suitable photos of the building “type/style” you wish to model. Things like books and vacation brochures or pamphlets are invaluable here, but the internet can be a great help too whether you are creating structures for the American Civil War, the Old West, or Japanese samurai scenarios.

Although I have a coffee table book on the Hanseatic League, with lots of great color photos, I turned to the web because I wanted to see examples of buildings from smaller (once German or German inhabited) cities and towns across Poland and the Baltic countries. So, I thought back over my history and geography and did an image search on Google, typing in former names like Reval, Dorpat, Allenstein, Tapiau, Soldau, Gumbinnen, Heydekrug, Eydtkuhnen, and the like. Try it yourself and see what you turn up.

Whatever you particular period/area of interest, the number of images out there in cyberspace is amazing and impressive. After finding a bunch of old and newer photos, I created a folder on my computer desktop and saved the results of my query into it, providing easy points of reference whenever they were needed. You can see one such image above. Next time, we’ll begin the building process in earnest.

P.S.
Almost forgot to mention -- There have now been more than 20,000 visits to the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

Basic Reds Done at Last. . .

S till quite a way to go with the current batch of 20 human figures and a horse (of course), but they're actually starting to look like something after all of the red distinctions. Quite a bit of painting in hour-long sessions the last week as and when time has allowed. Mostly applying the basic dark red to facing areas and turnbacks followed by the inevitable touch-ups to clean up wobbly edges and those misplaced, minute splotches of Citadel Khorne Red. They're looking like so many Austrian infantry regiments of the era at this point, but the eventual flags will turn them magically into the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment, more or less, of the AWI period. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. One frustrating point (ahem) of sad discovery. I've started trying to use those Winsor & Newton 'Series Seven' brushes (#1 rounds) purchased last spring, and the blasted things simply will not keep a point. Very frustrating since I have heard over the y...

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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