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Monday, 22 August 2011

Call me Slarti

The last few weeks on top of my painting schedule I have also been building some terrain for Matt, Matt wanted some aesthetic but multi-purpose terrain that could be stored in a relatively small space, we therefore went for flat boards so that Matt could place his own roads, woods etc on top, I would make three larger hills, also to be placed on top. We went for poly boards mounted on MDF for ridgidity, this would be covered with green towelling suitably sprayed with car paint, Rover Brooklands Green, Applejack and Ford Daytona Yellow respectively. Some of boards would also have patches of grass matting to represent more broken terrain, marsh etc. The only sculptured pieces would be the stream, this again would be made to be configured two different ways for variety, I glued the poly boards to the MDF as per the others and carved the shape of the stream that Matt desired, this was then coated with Polytex, painted a suitable colour to match as far possible the bases of Matt's figures, I added a few stones, driftwood etc. I then used Woodland Scenics Realistic water to fill the stream, I stopped off the ends by staple gunning a piece of card wrapped in cling film and then sealed the edge with clear silicon filler to stop the Realistic water running out the ends. One bottle has been enough to put on four layers. To give the illusion of more depth the bottom of the stream was painted a darker colour in the middle and on the outside bends where the water tends to be deeper, I also painted it a lighter colour at the two fords to give a shallower effect, I am just waiting for the final layer of water to dry before taking of the stoppers, keeping my fingers crossed they will come off OK.

Here are some WIP shots

The stream marked out.
 One of the plain boards, unfortuneatley the camera has washed out the subtle shading given by the spray.
 One of the hills, with twin peaks
 The towelling is wrapped underneath and staplegunned to give a flusher fit with the boards
 Hill in place on the board
 The stream polyfillered and painted
 The stream boards
 Detailing
 The end stopped off for filling with the water
 Broken terrain piece
I will add more pics of the finished stream and an overall shot later.

There you go, not on a par with the fijords but I hope this will be of interest and show that you can have handsome looking and at the same time versatile terrain.

TTFN

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Bits and Bobs

Its been a quiet month on the gaming and painting front on account of my good wife dragging me off to Tuscany for a week and then down to Devon the week after. Prior to going off I managed to win three Wings of War dogfights against Dave, since I have been back I lost a rather close Late Roman Civil War encounter at GHQ using Hail Caesar and last night lost again here at OHQ playing a Spanish Civil War game using Brigadier 38. I also paid a visit to GHQ to help Dave take the last few photo's for his latest rule set for the Indian Mutiny "The Devils Wind", these are now at the printers and will hopefully be with the main sellers in time for Claymore.
Again my own painting as taken a back seat due to, thankfully, being very busy with commission work. I have however now completed my 4th Carlist battalion and just need to finish off the light company for a 4th Isabelino battalion and I just need to paint 2 figures for each side to complete a cavalry unit. I have also completed a PzI for my Spanish Civil War Nationalist forces and inspired by Saxon Dog  http://saxondog.blogspot.com/ started on my 3rd Cent. Romans which was to be a  mid 2012 project, not just Dave really as I also read "Lion of the Sun" the third book in Harry Sidebottom's "Warrior of Rome" series whilst I was away.

Here are a few shots of some of the things I have been painting



 Front Rank British Marlburian Foot, a commission. The customer is adding the flags
 A Spanish Civil War Nationalist PzI. Empress Miniatures
 Third Century Romans, these were block painted with strong tone dip brushed on and then highlighted back up. Figures from A&A, shield transfers LBM (a God send for painters of Ancients) the arrow is from the Perry WotR plastics box.

TTFN