Author Topic: A small project (Read 5724 times)

Admiral Benbow · « **on:** February 13, 2009, 01:19:13 PM »

Had a lot of fun recently with this small project, two shacks for my old west terrain (mainly ...). The inspiration came from that brilliant topic http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=9394.0 by archangel1 from last week friday. I jumped into this wonderful world of high detailed diorama building, following the link provided, admiring hundreds of breathtaking photos and discovering a very friendly railroader's forum with lots of building threats you could walk through for the next couple of years. Although I don't want to change my hobby converting over to the railroading breathren, I just had the wish to work with a slightly higher degree of detailing in my wargames stuff without loosing playability. As I attended the Friday evening's club meeting, I started this little project on Saturday evening.

The two small shacks from Snapdragon had been basically painted some time ago, some of you may remember another of those shacks I used on my goldmine project; http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=7443.0 .

Two smokestakes were added from styrene tubing, a base cut from Forex (a high density polystyrene immune to warping) and sanded flat at the sides, and then I looked through my spare and detail parts boxes and picked 17 small items, from barrels and bales to oil drums and small tools. Everything was painted and weathered, the shacks glued to the base, some ground terrain created with ready made coloured plaster, all items placed and some nice selected grasses, turfs and flocks planted. Two small bushes were a last minute addition to the scene. As I did the photos yesterday, and had one evening in between watching the highly recommended russian film "Admiral Kolchak", I worked on this project for 5 evenings, all in all around 8 - 9 hours. Of course you could use this terrain piece not only for the old west, but for a lot of other settings like VSF, Pulp or any other 19th/20th century periods.

On top of that I was able to kill two birds with one stone: at the club meeting on Friday we had the first layout test for our VSF-game at the Tactica in Hamburg end of the month, and I discovered that the jungle covered flight stand for my zeppelin "Königin Luise" would not be a natural sight in the busy german colonial Tsingtau harbour! Thinking about other and more adequate options, and remembering that we could really need some more smaller buildings for the harbour, suddenly everything came together and the solution was there:

As I said, a real small fun project working with a lot of different techniques and testing some of the newly aquired ones from the railroad forum. Another, this time larger building complex has been started just yesterday evening, VSF-orientated this time. I'm sure you will see the result on these pages ...

Svennn · « **Reply #1 on:** February 13, 2009, 01:29:21 PM »

Quality as usual Sir (read jealousy). Nice combination of the two projects. Still love that Zeppelin to bits

Plynkes · « **Reply #2 on:** February 13, 2009, 03:24:34 PM »

Admiral, you make such beautiful things.

I must own that they dishearten me a little about my own efforts, they are so good. Still, no place for faint hearts here. Chin up. Onwards and upwards!

Admiral Benbow · « **Reply #3 on:** February 13, 2009, 04:32:07 PM »

Quote from: Plynkes on February 13, 2009, 03:24:34 PM

I must own that they dishearten me a little about my own efforts, they are so good. Still, no place for faint hearts here. Chin up. Onwards and upwards!

Plynkes, your FFFFF-topics still haunt me in my dreams, and I was a long time thinking about a club of my own ...

Short time ago I recovered a bit and could start the first smallish projects again, so please don't tell me anything about "dishearten me" ...

Will we ever see another FFFFF-instalment?

Plynkes · « **Reply #4 on:** February 13, 2009, 05:16:23 PM »

Yes, I'm working on two members right now.

I didn't lose enthusiasm for the project as a whole, I just got a bit tired of building plastic model planes. But I am over that now.

hohlinger · « **Reply #5 on:** February 13, 2009, 06:10:28 PM »

Extremely beautiful!!! The details are a very nice roundup for the whole project.

May I ask you for the colours you use to paint the wooden parts of the houses???
Thanks in advance.

dampfpanzerwagon · « **Reply #6 on:** February 13, 2009, 06:38:56 PM »

A beautifully executed project - railway modellers have a lot of inspirational terrain and it is good to see this being used on the wargaming table - long may it continue.

Tony
http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/

Grimm · « **Reply #7 on:** February 13, 2009, 07:17:41 PM »

I throw my buildings in the trash can !!

how did you mke the bushes ??

grimm

Captain Blood · « **Reply #8 on:** February 13, 2009, 07:32:18 PM »

Gorgeous, Admiral Benbow. The bushes are fantastic, and the Snapdragon sheds are wonderfully painted. Lovely.

archangel1 · « **Reply #9 on:** February 14, 2009, 06:14:30 AM »

Nicely done and thanks for the nod. I've never understood the reluctance of some modellers to use techniques learned from other disciplines. Just because a paint may have a name like 'Scab Red' or 'Deck Teak' doesn't mean you can't use it to paint a car or a figure. Likewise, who said you can't use military modelling skills to work on your model railroad? They're not Gospel, after all.

Malamute · « **Reply #10 on:** February 14, 2009, 08:42:29 AM »

Quote from: Captain Blood on February 13, 2009, 07:32:18 PM

Gorgeous, Admiral Benbow. The bushes are fantastic, and the Snapdragon sheds are wonderfully painted. Lovely.

I second that, tell us about the bushes.

Overlord · « **Reply #11 on:** February 14, 2009, 11:03:43 AM »

WOW!

Stunning work. The bushes & groundwork is so effective. The mix of plants looks very realistic)

gamer Mac · « **Reply #12 on:** February 14, 2009, 11:14:09 AM »

Great work

Can you tell me what colours/method you used to paint the rusty oil barrels. They look very realistic.

Looking forward to more of your great terrain pics

jet · « **Reply #13 on:** February 14, 2009, 01:04:26 PM »

holy crap!

and I second everything everyone else said and asked.

JET

Admiral Benbow · « **Reply #14 on:** February 14, 2009, 05:28:36 PM »

Thanks for the nice comments, lads, here are some details as requested:

Paints: the buildings were handpainted using two different Tamiya tones: XF 49 Khaki and XF 51 Khaki Drab to get some tonal variation. When the paint was cured, the buildings got a heavy wash with slightly thinned down dark wood stain and were set aside for at least 24 hours. Then two or three highlighting sessions with some cream and light ocre acrylics followed to get the highlights. The secret with drybrushing is to stay subtle; use a large, soft brush and wipe most of the colour away on scrap paper. The paint should build up slowly, without any streaks. I used some pastels for weathering.

Oil barrels: light sand Humbrol undercoat; sponge on a dark brown acrylic, followed by a red brown or two in some spots. Small sponges were cut from the foam material you all know from the mini blisters. Then a wash with thinned down dark ink. Weathering with two or more pastels. Buy yourself some cheap pastel chalk sticks (the non-oil type) from the craft shop and rub them down on fine sandpaper when needed. They will go a long way ...

Bushes: they are quite simple to make, here's a pic of the materials used:

You start with a material called "poly fibre" if you buy it from Woodland Scenics, but there are similar and cheaper materials available. I bought a bag of "Märchenwolle" from the german Prandel company in a craft shop. Another product called "Wild Weeds" can be seen on the right. This Prandel material is dark brown, you will expand it at lot with your fingers until it is near translucend and rip off a piece appr. the size of your thumb. Squeeze it together in the middle and fix it with a small strip of tape. You now have two small bushes at either side of the tape (I hope you can follow me ...). Put some glue around the fibres where they come out of the tape to keep them in form and let dry. Then cut the bushes from the tape with scissors, the glued end is where the bushes are planted to the ground.

Now take the bush with tweezers at the glued end or fix it with a drop of white glue to some scrap card, and spray it quite heavily with either spray adhesive, varnish or simple hair spray. Then sprikle it with scatter material of your choice, I use two tones of the nice "Laub" from german company Noch, which contains nicely formed tiny leaves. You'll find similar materials at Antenocities Workshop. I start with a dark tone of leaves first, sprinkling them only to the lower parts of the bush, and then the lighter ones on top. Another fix with hair spray, some drying time and you can glue down your first naturally looking bush.

This may sound complicated, but is essentially quite easy and you could produce some ten to fifteen bushes in an hour. Just give it a try it!

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Author Topic: A small project (Read 5724 times)

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