A little diorama

This as made for a little friendly competition on the WAB forum years ago. I think I won but to be fair there weren't that many entrants :-)

The combatants are from the Honda clan (black and white) and the Ii clan (red). The bridge is made following plans gained from the Osaka history museum.

The water is a remeltable one but unfortunately there is still a miniscus around the edges,youcan get finger prints in it (it stay rubbery) and it collects dust like a bugger :-/

Anyway, on to some photos :-)

ttfn

Whilst I'm in the posting mood...

I'll show you another little commission that was done awhile ago.

It's a wajo, which was generally a small fort in Korea made by the invading Japanese and although they were only supposed to be temporary structures they were built to resist determined attack.

Only a couple of progress photos which are below with the remainder being finished piccies. Unfortunately I haven't cleaned up the finished photos yet but they don't look too bad.

The basic construction was an acrylic box following the finished shape, this was then clad in resin stonework sheeting that I'd had a for a while. The walls were lasered in card with a few damaged areas that were filled with a simple mesh.

Distressed balsa wood for the roofs and a copious amount of sand and it was ready for painting

The wajo was painted with off white panels (apparently there is quite chalky soil in certain parts of Korea) and a greyish brown for the wood.

The stone walls were painted in various shades of grey including some creams and then were washed with ink and drybrushed up.

The flags were printed up, slightly weathered and stuck to some brass frames that I soldered together.

ttfn

Whilst the going is good...

I'll post some pictures of some recently painted figures. I think most of these have made an appearance on the LAF but seeing as I'm in a posting mood here we go :-)

First off are some Bac Ninh figures, Shogunate officers and men. The chap with his arms behind his back is actually a Copplestone naval officer with head swap, seemed to work quite well.

The next lot are some Game of Thrones figures using mainly Perry WotR plastics with some Gripping Beast dark age heads and arms. There's also a bit of green stuff in the way of cloaks and wooly bits. I've got a fair few more of these put together and will hopefully paint them soon.

Also we have some old Games Workshop 'Dogs of War' figures that the Perrys did a while back. These are for an ongoing 'Army Painter' project on the LAF. I've got an awful lot of these (mainly pikemen and crossbows) but they'll get done eventually.

Finally some VSF figures for our ongoing adventures on Mars. Mainly a mix of Perrys and Copplestone with a few small green stuff bits here and there and the odd head swap. And as a slight departure from our normal 28mm shenanigans some 10mm Sudanese Brits from Pendraken that are on Mars. I'll be making a lot of stuff to go with these hopefully... Watch this space...

ttfn

10mm for a change

Got this little commission in a while ago of a Saxon church. Not the Dark age types but the region in Germany.

The inspiration from the client was from John Boadles site as he had already made one in 28mm, to fit on a base with a fence and a tree or two.

Quite a simple brief and yet quite an enjoyable model.

I actually made this one the 'traditional way, as in all hand cut from card.

The base was supplied and it was just a little work to translate the original 28mm model into the smaller scale and to fit nicely on the base.

The roof was also made from card and the tiles are from an old styrene sheet that I had to hand (I have since been able to find the same sheeting from EMA).

No more progress shots of this but the windows were lasered and the door was scratched from balsa wood. The fence was a bit of timber cut down very fine, I used timber because of it's strength and the size needed, balsa just wouldn't hack it unfortunately.

The trees were old etched ones from work that needed a bit of love before putting on. The groundwork was a fine mix of textured masonry paint and fine sand given the smaller scale but painted in the normal way with several different types of flock to break it up.

It was painted in Foundry colours to help give the richness of the original model. I'll leave you now with the finished photos. The figures are Pendraken 10mm Spaniards (the only 10mm I had for size) and a 28mm 18th century chappy tjust to show the scale difference.

ttfn

The Pathans are watching

I recently finished a commission that'll be winging its way to its new owner this week.

A Pathan watchtower.

I was given an image of such a watchtower to base the build on but I thought it looked a little regular for the back hills of wherever it might be so I altered it a bit...

I started off with a blue foam base and sculpted the stones and rocks into it using a fine ball point pen, quite a simple task but you have to be careful in not letting it look like it's been drawn on. After doing the block work a few stones were picked out with some filler on top to bring them above the flat plane of the building side and then a thin wash of filler/glue/water was applied to the whole of the bottom to help tie it together.

All of the lower floor was painted in a grey/brown and about eight different shades were used to pick out some of the stones to help break up the monotomy. The ground work was done in the usual way, sand, then inked with brown ink and brought up through ever lightning shades of tan. I made it a bit lighter than I normally do to help represent a more arid atmosphere found in the back end of nowhere. Then various growies were applied around the nooks and crannies.

The upper floor took me a good couple of weeks to decide on the best way to achieve it. I was going to use the normal route of cutting textured sheeting and painting it but I thought something a little different was needed... I therefore spent a good few hours cutting up hundreds of little bricks from blue foam. I didn't use a ruler or a straight edge, just a steady hand and a good eye as a little randomness was what was required.

These were then stuck on a layer of thin tape and then built up course by course. The tape was used to enable the top floor to be removed when all was dry and complete as interior access was required.

I built up the layers two or three at a time and fortunately, due to the hot weather, it wasn't taking that long for them to be touch dry and another couple of layers stuck on.

I found it a very pleasing way to build and although it's not as quick, there is more control and a definate 'built' look to it. 

The roof was mainly conjecture but the natural look of it should help to blend it in. A wooden frame was built and then painted, I then used some fine bristles and literally stitched them onto the framework. The fortunate thing was that the bristles were already a decent natural colour and e only thing to do (apart from ink the thread) was to drybrush them. In hindsight, I should've made the roof wider as it's a bit short, but not detrimentally so.

The whole thing stands about 235mm from the bottom of the base and the base itself is about 150mm square.

I'll leave you now with some 'beauty' shots but you might see it on the net somewhere in the future as I believe the new owner is going to get some serious use out of it :-)

ttfn