Buildings and Terrain

Yesterday, I ordered a couple of boxes of plastic spruce/fir trees made by Zvezda (item #8222) from the Michigan Toy Soldier Company. These look very similar to the plastic trees featured in all those photos in various works by Charles Grant, and I think they will help impart that “old school” feel to my table top.

I also took a stab at my first Dutch/Northern German house (with gables) and had a basic structure all cut out of heavy cardboard and glued together in about 45 minutes. The structure is very basic (I’ll paint on the doors and windows) and measures about 3”x4” and about 4” tall. So, it’s slightly under scale but looks good next to the figures and won’t take up too much room on the table.

Today, I’ll add a balsa chimney or two and cut a base on which to glue some blasa and cardboard "ruins". These will fit inside the house. Then I'll have the first of several planned buildings made in the Charles Grant style. Maybe I'll even add a coat of reddish brown poster paint to approximate the red brick of old houses and buildings in the Baltic region. Depending on how time goes later today, and if the mood strikes me, I might cut out and glue together pieces for a couple of other houses and maybe a church too. Then I’ll have enough buildings for a village. Photos will follow here – naturally.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I've always enjoyed making the various buildings I've made for my game table. I tend to use "foamcore" instead of cardboard . . . but the difference in materials is not very important.

I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of your buildings. In fact, some pics of them in various stages of construction would not be amiss.

-- Jeff

1:59 AM

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

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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