New Bridge Connects Both Sides of Town

Well, I've obviously been bitten by the construction bug, and the building mania continues here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen. But sometimes, you've got to roll with it, right?

I put the bridge, at the center of this photo, together yesterday and noted all of the various steps involved since I might try writing an article about constructing one's own "old school" scenery quickly and inexpensively. We'll see. In any case, the bridge is based on one Ian Weekley built back in the 1980s. The article and photos appeared in, let's see, an issue of Miniature Wargames I believe.

My model bridge here is in three pieces. To simulate a damaged/blown-up bridge, small piles of cork chips have been glued into place beneath each end of the middle section. You can't see these here, but I'll post some additional photos once painting is finished, which show the model "whole" and with the central section removed, revelaing the miniature piles of rubble. And yes, the six archways were painstakingly cut out using a standard small, triangular X-acto hobby knife blade. Tedious and time consuming, but they turned out well, I think. If all goes well, I'll paint the bridge in the next day or so, using the same dusty "brick" shades of Burnt Sienna for the walls, Orange Oxide for the tower roofs, and various shades of grey for the roadway and bases.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I'm getting very impressed by your efforts.

Yes, by all means, keep going with it . . . and I certainly would like to read an article about how you built all of these buildings.

-- Jeff

9:35 PM

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

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...

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 ...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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