The Mill Is Almost Finished. . .

 It won't win any modelling awards, but my model of the mill at Plessa is a nice, cheery little structure that fits well with the rest of my buildings.  Quite a few of them now looking down from the shelves where I display and keep them over the painting table.

Almost finished now with the saw-/grist mill.  It looked pretty good without the timbering, and I worried about making a mistake in the application of, which would have required time consuming backtracking (That's a mouthful!) to fix.  In the end, I jumped in up to my hips and took half an hour or so to approximate some timbering just across the front end of the mill, which you'll observe above.  

Just a few small touch-ups with the paintbrush now.  After all, a reasonable paint job can hide a multitude of other sins in the construction as we observed a few evenings ago in the final episode of Endeavor, which, if such a thing were possible, is even better (and darker) than the original Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis/Hathaway series.  Morse, Inspector Thursday, Sergeant Strange, and Mr. Bright.  What an investigative team!

Here is a photograph of the actual mill in Brandenburg on which my model above is based.  You can see the timbering design on the front of the building that I approximated using my usual mix of magic marker, dark brown children's crayon, and dark brown colored pencil.  Tedious and repetitive, but it gives a decent effect.

But back to the mill.  If you look closely, you'll see that I've glossed the mill wheel and the millstream, or "leat" (Thank you, Allan!) below it to approximate moisture.  It made sense at the time, and The Young Master, who was on hand for that particular painting stage, concurred.  So, three coats of gloss it was.  

The pleasing dark blue-green-brown color of the water channel was achieved by the seat of my pants by randomly mixing and applying wet -- Wait for it! -- blue, green, and brown craft colors.  Not realistic, but a not unpleasant end result I think.  Perfect for my particular style of toy soldiers and related tabletop battles.

That's about it then.  The next time our mill will appear will be all finished and on the table for Sawmill Village during the long Labor Day weekend at the start of September.  In the meantime, I'll start on another figure painting project of some kind although I haven't decided what quite yet.  

I'd like to have a go at a squadron or two of some kind of cavalry.  In all honesty, there is so much unpainted lead residing in the large bottom drawer to my left that anything would be a step in the right direction.  We'll see who, or what speaks loudest to me.

-- Stokes


P.S.
Apropos of nothing, here is a weblink to the accommodations available in this wonderful old mill.  The next time we make it to Berlin, I think I'll insist that we spend a weekend here and explore the surrounding countryside on bikes.  Sonja and I have long talked about something like that, and The Young Master is an accomplished cyclist now, so. . .  

And an earlier, high angle shot of the almost finished, pre-timbering mill for good measure.