A Random Selection of Village and Rural Buildings. . .

The tollhouse

These better lighted photographs of a few of my scratch-built buildings are for Pat, who has asked about them in an inquiry he posted about "Grantian" building models over on Jim Perky's Fife and Drum Miniatures Forum.

All of these have appeared previously in two of Charles Grant's Wargamer's Annuals. The first four structures shown are in the most recent 2018 edition accompanying my article on how to build a Baltic German town center, while the large farmhouse and barn at the bottom of the post were, I believe, part of a shorter piece several years back on how to build an East Prussian farmstead.

Any of the buildings shown should work in a Mollwitz-Lobositz context as far as providing the right kind of tabletop window dressing. In any case, I've included our usual runway model pals Frederick II and von Seydlitz to provide an idea of the various building dimensions.

-- Stokes

The village inn and pub. . . The Duke of Brunswick

A half-timbered house

Another half-timbered house

A large farmhouse

With internal ruins for reference

Its large companion barn

Assorted smaller farm buildings and a few lean-tos to vary external appearances.

The village church

The village church from another angle. I plan to construct a second red brick North German church this summer based on an existing structure in the town of Boizenberg, with a rather different tower and spire, plus several additional half-timbered, or fachwerk, houses and warehouses based on now crumbling edifices across the north of Poland, coastal Lithuania, and Riga, Latvia. All just cry out to be constructed in miniature.

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

Search This Blog