28mm Samurai terrain (roadside shrine)

Aha, two posts today? Hell yeah!

Well, I've been off all week with nasty germs and so have had a bit of time (not much though as my wife has been keeping tabs on me) to make things :-)

For the samurai I thought it was about time to make something a bit more than stand alone and so the thought of a roadside shrine to into being.

I wanted to use items that are available from the catalogue just to show what could be possible with a little bit of imagination.

Having come across something similar in Japan it was quite easy to decide the layout which you can see on the right. The figure is an unbased Perry cavalry samurai..

I decided to make the torii from scratch (which they all are) because the ones in the catalogue are already based and I wanted this one integral to the base. Most of these rural shrines have a gravel path leading up to them but I wanted this one to have a disheveled look so some of the border stones are slightly out of place.

This shot shows the final layout and it has also been sanded (sieved builders sand) and covered in thin brown ink. the roof for the moment is separate but everything else is stuck down (a slight mistake on my part but not too troublesome).

Here we have a shot of the basic greenery on the base. I decided to go for three different types of 'growie' for maximum effect and a slightly overgrown appearance.

All the parts were painted in the same way as the catalogue items, I didn't think much point in painting them differently.

The path was drybrushed with various greys and the earth with beiges and tans, building up a nice varied tone throughout.

The growies were added with thinned down white wood glue that was randomly brushed on, the growies being scattered on at three different times, letting each one dry before putting the next one on.

There are a few places where the growies have grown onto the path (hopefully you can see them) and I've also put a few tall grass clumps on just to add to the variation. The trees are old ones from work.

I did think of using some Silfor but it seems everyone is doing it now and I wanted something slightly different. Below we have the beauty shots and there are quite a few because I'm quite pleased with this one :-) I have a few other things of this nature planned but time will tell...

ttfn