A quick little church

Got a little church to do for David Imrie for his medieval collection. Still needs a base and I’ll be doing a graveyard (medieval version) to go along with it.

Rather enjoyed doing this one. The mains carcass is lasered acrylic clad in styrene sheet with micro strip additions.

It was base coated grey and various speckles were added in different colours. It was then given a brown ink wash and drybrushed a lighter grey than the base coat. Some suitable weathering was added to finish it off. The base was done in the normal way but with the additions of some grave slabs and a couple of bits of hedge that will ‘join’ onto the separate graveyard base; more on which later.

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What I have recently painted

Something a little different this time and hopefully a regular/irregular feature. Basically it’s what I’ve painted figure wise recently. I don’t get much time for my own stuff at the moment but I do try to squeeze it in here and there so below are a few shots of figures I’ve painted over the past month or two or three with a brief outline of the projects they are for but in no particular order.

An Eldar dreadnaught for an old school project which is mainly concentrating on orks and Imperial guard. The head now has a coat of gloss varnish on it but it's a sod to take decent photos of lol. No reason to have other little forces though :-)

Copplestone/EM4 figures for a small cartel project. I've gone for an eighties feel and hopefully the colours and t-shirt logos convey this. Everyone else in the project has gone for high tech moderns. I tend to get beaten a lot lol.

 Austrian officer from Victrix I think. Austrians were my first Napoleonic force years and years ago (15mm) so it sort of fits to do them again. I do need to buy quite a few more though lol.

Star Wars! It's actually a Pig Iron figure with a Crooked Dice head. I've got a fair few other Pig Iron figures to do and most, if not all need some head work doing. The troopers are the Wizards of the Coast bendy plastics.

These are my own range of Boxer Rebellion Japanese infantry but with Perry plastic pith helmet heads and they are for the Royal Interplanetary Society for my ever expanding Mars project.

These are the GW plastic knights that have had some bits swaps and I think the conversions work fine. The leader is based on the GW Green Knight model with an Elector Count rider who's had arms and a hat conversion.

And finally we have a single knight from Crusader Miniatures painted for a potential Robin Hood project. No idea about the heraldry, I made it up.

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Construction of Nottingham

As promised, I've got a post about how I made the matt and board for Nottingham castle.

It certainly wasn't done in the normal way but it seems to work and be rather effective. As space is at a premium in the 'cupboard' I decided to use the Mars boards I've made and double them for our Robin Hood project. 

The boards are 50mm deep as the Martian canal is this depth so there's plenty of space to play with on the underneath of the boards and as most of the Mars boards are plain it seemed a waste to leave them untouched.

I stared off with a rough layout of the castle parts that had already been done to allow for the positioning of the moat.

Firstly, two cut outs on two sides of the board were cut out to represent the cross section of the moat. Then, the interior of the underneath of the Mars board was built up first with a 30mm layer following the course of the moat and given a rocky texture by basically ripping out small chunks of the foam. On top of this a sheet of6mm acrylic was cut to fit inside the board but with two tabs where the moat crosses the edge of the board.

Then the final top layer of thin foam was cut and shaped to size for both sides of the moat. Before any of this was stuck down the acrylic was painted underneath with a browny green wash and the same wash was applied to the moat bed and sides. After this was dry it was stuck to the bottom foam layer with copious amounts of thick superglue and left to dry for a couple of days. Once dry the top layer was applied in the same way and left to go off.

An extension from the none castle side was made under the water out of styrene sheeting to allow the drawbridge to lower, as the drawbridge can only be a certain size this extension of the ground was needed (it will make sense in a photo later on). 

Once the top was thoroughly stuck it was given a coat of sand but not where the castle sits as it makes it much easier for transporting. When dry, the sand was washed with dark brown ink and drybrushed up to try and match my existing boards.

Here you can see the extension from the ground towards the gate and before the top layer was applied and sand etc added.

Greenery was added here and there and inside the castle walls was painted brown with limited grass in the corners. THe drawbridge was made from balsa and I am in the process of making a couple of small loops that the bridge lowering chains will come through. The drawbridge will remain removeable for ease of transporting.

Below are a few shots of it complete and hopefully very soon I'll be making another board that will extend the castle down one side.

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Riding through the glen...

I've got some more progress on the Hollywood Hood project that I posted about several months ago.

As this is a long term project (like so many others) I keep coming back to it when the muse descends. Those of you who frequent the LAF will possibly have seen this but here are some of the better photos of different terrain items and figures that have been completed so far. Not much wordage I'm afraid (maybe that's not a bad thing) just pictures to enjoy :-)

Any questions feel free to ask but I'll be doing a post later this month about the castle and how I did the most etc.

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Hollywood Hood

A little bit of whimsy tonight as I'm going to show you the progress on a project a couple of us are doing at the moment (although it's gone by the wayside somewhat, what with holidays etc). Some of you may have seen this on LAF a while back but I though I would post it here to help give me some more inspiration to carry on!

On the left we have F**king Massive John, a monster of a figure from Foundry, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head he stands a whopping 38mm :-0

The idea for the campaign was to have a Hollywood version of Robin Hood and all the cheesyness that comes with it, being predominantly a terrain builder I'm making the buildings but I am painting some factions to play with (one shown on the left)  and I'll post some more in another blog post in the near future.

The initial buildings were to be kept quite simple, thatched hovels for the most part which are quite quick and 'dirty' to do. Below you'll see various building shots.

Simple card walls with balsa timber and textured paint for the panels and teddy bear fur for the thatched roof (you can see here the size of FMJ next to a Perry monk.

After a few of these were made a church was needed. I've already made a couple of these so the template was ready to go but I added a small cemetery and a rather large tree.

The colour scheme was kept broadly the same as the hovels and the groundwork was done in the usual way.

The graves were just lumps of acrylic that were the right sort of size with a small mound in front and the wattle fence used bristles from a brush and were placed on randomly to help give a village feel. I actually haven't got a close up of the fence but will do at a later date).

The windows were backsprayed acrylic and the frames were laser cut. It has been suggested that I use the mesh you can get from Halfords to 'lead' the windows a bit more and I think I'll do it. It will help to make it look a bit busier.

It was heavily weathered and I added a few more growies around the church than I would normally. 

I'm also in the process of making a upperclass house with a walled garden and a monastery that will fit on a 18" x 24" base with removable roofs (but this is a long term project, like so many others!).

We've got a fair amount planned for this campaign including an archery contest (very quick but fun rules), a deer hunt, wolf attacks, sheep rustling, an attack on the castle (which I have to make as well) and just normal scraps.

There will also be the Green Knight, Ivanhoe and many other characters from the Robin Hood tales. I myself am fighting for the King but that might change if I keep getting beaten :-)

We have even played a quick game to refresh ourselves with the rules (a disaster on my part where my entire faction was pretty much wiped out). There are photos of this and a few other things below.

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