Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Royal Navy Gunboat added

[Digits]

Yes, thanks for the tutorial fella.

[grotuz]

I have a larger planter full of that same ornamental grass. Who knew I was sitting on a field full of miniature elephant grass construction material. Nice tutorial and I'm going to have to give that a go after I cut and dry those stems out next spring.

These will nicely augment my existing elephant grass. That was made using 2" fender washers, Durhams Water Putty, spray and craft paints, and sissal rope from the hardware store that was cut to desired length and soaked in hot water to straighten it out.

First step is prime and spray the washers whatever color you want the base to look like. Put the washer on wax paper, cover the top of it with the Durhams - which you can color to taste by adding cheap craft paints to - and wait until the putty begins to stiffen. Then grab a handful of the sissal and stick it into the putty. The stiffness of the putty and the density of the almost 2" wad of sissal (all lined up straight and down of course) keeps it all from falling over. It all dries rock hard in 2 hours and then you can add flocking, gravel, downed logs, drybrushing, etc to taste as well as paint the edges of the washers.. I even made some trampled down spots for a little more flavor. I think I made about 300-400 of these in one day and they cover a significant area of the table (about 1200+ square inches).

[Diablo Jon]

While building my Ngoni army I thought it might be fun if each army I built, for this project, had a bit of themed scenery to go with it. After a little pondering I thought a royal kraal might be cool.

Now I’ll admit I have no idea if the Ngoni still built huts and kraals that resembled those from their original homelands once they settled around lake Nyasa. As they moved North the Ngoni incorporated a number of different ethnic groups in their ranks and, I assume, picked up new techniques and styles of buildings so that their dwellings could have resembled lots of different style . Unfortunately A Google search brought no useful info at all .

I do know that  Ngoni society had names for different groups among them split up between those that came from the original homeland and those that joined latter. It seems that those descended from the original Ndwandwe and Swazi had higher social status than those who joined latter and kings and chiefs could probably draw a lineage back to the original refugees. Given that I took a punt that a Royal kraal would be built using techniques from the orginal homeland to emphizise a kings links to his Ndwandwe roots…..that could of course be absolute rubbish but it was a good enough excuse for me.

So I purchased three resin Zulu huts from Empress Miniatures and started collecting twigs to build a palisade. I had a few left over Zulu civilians and a chief from some packs I had purchased, for making my army baggage train, so I painted them up to populate the kraal. For the palisade I just cut the twigs and hot glued them to lolly sticks and painted them. In the end what I ended up with was this

[Mike1879]

Excellent that particularly the Kraal fencing!! The warrior crouched saluting the chief, is he a conversion ?? He looks like a Perry miniatures plastic Zulu but how did you get him to pose like that

[gamer Mac]

very nice

[Diablo Jon]

Excellent that particularly the Kraal fencing!! The warrior crouched saluting the chief, is he a conversion ?? He looks like a Perry miniatures plastic Zulu but how did you get him to pose like that

Spot on sir he is a Perry plastic Zulu from the command sprue. No conversion, as I recall, I just used bits provided from the sprue. As I didn't want any gun armed Ngoni I struggled to come up with uses for the kneeling guys one became a scout the other one seen here became set dressing.

[Diablo Jon]

Another piece of scenery for my African project a watering hole. This one was inspired by watching those wildlife documentaries in my youth. You know the sort of thing a rapidly shrinking water source, resembling a mud bath, filled full of crocodiles and hippos and surrounded by other wildlife looking for a drink (normally followed up by some poor antelope becoming a crocs dinner).

I’ve not built many  water features before I’ve either painted commercial pieces or gone for a basic blue painted effect. So wanting to try something a bit more realistic I had a look around the net and ended up watching a few model railway youtube vids. I discounted resin and some ready made water products as a bit pricey and decided to use a PVA glue technique I came across.

Sadly my first attempt was well… frankly a bit crap



So not being happy I decided to have another go. I brought a large 30cm ply laser cut circle to use as a base  built up the sides with pink foam off cuts and cork board.



Then I took some of my spare teddy fur and glued it around the outside



Then I created the water using tissue paper and PVA glue. When it was dry I painted it with green/brown colours



Then I used some of the cheap brown window filler I pick up from Poundland, added in some stones and sand. when the filler had dried a bit I went back and created an area to look like mud churned up by lots of animals coming to drink



When everything was dry I went back and painted the teddy fur and filler. The final touch was some more layers of clear PVA on the water and mud areas and a final coat of gloss varnish. What I ended up with was this..









I'm much happier with the second attempt and I could see it making a great objective in a game for a lost, and thirsty, exploring expedition.

[FifteensAway]

A: Give yourself a little more credit for the first attempt - it isn't That bad, just needs work around the edges and it, too, can be a useable terrain piece.

B: Damn, why didn't I think of that!  Which means, yes, you guessed it, the sincerest form of flattery ahead (eventually).

C: Very cool! 

[gamer Mac]

Very nice job that looks like a screen shot off of the program you were watching the one with the hippos

[Eric the Shed]

fantastic stuff - and your photography is spot on as well

[Diablo Jon]

Thanks for the nice comments guys.

So to go with the watering hole I needed some wildlife looking at other peoples Darkest Africa games, on the net, one thing that struck me is that a few strategically placed African animals can really help to set the scene of your wargames table. There are plenty of 28mm African animals out there so I picked up a few from Northstar and Foundry miniatures.

Of course I dived straight in without any research and bought some Oryx (Gembok) and some Zebra, from NorthStar, after further research I discovered neither species really hangs around Malawi where I was planning to set my games….ho hum

On the plus side my NorthStar Leopard was fine. Though rare now Leopards where common enough in Malawi in the 19th century before, no doubt, the Europeans arrived with their guns.

I seemed on safe ground with my Foundry Crocodile and Hippopotamus as lake Nyasa has its fair share of Nile crocs and Hippos so that was good.

One thing I did find is wild animals seemed a lot harder to paint than soldiers. I struggled to get colours right and get paint jobs that looked natural, the worst culprits where the Zebra who after a couple of attempts are still sat on the painting table as I can’t get them to a standard I find expectable who'd of thought black and white stripes would be so hard to paint well?

Anyway here are a few pictures of the ones I have painted.

Oryx (painted as the East African species) (Northstar)









Leopard (NorthStar)









Hippos (Foundry)









Croc (Foundry)

[FifteensAway]

Love the critters - and, while maybe not perfect, use them anyway.  Won't be many who know they aren't right for where you put them.

As to painting zebras, I studied a lot of photos and realized one thing that helped mine blend (though hardly great paint jobs, just paint jobs) was to use a very light wash of a dull yellow.  Seemed to work.  I'd post a picture but I somehow managed to delete from my blog (think I deleted the image on the computer without realizing.  Bases aren't textured so wouldn't be a great photo).  And they are actually horses and mules with a whole bunch of onagers waiting to get painted as zebras since I have yet to find any made in 15 mm - sometimes we just have to go with a "make work" solution.

[Diablo Jon]

Love the critters - and, while maybe not perfect, use them anyway.  Won't be many who know they aren't right for where you put them.

As to painting zebras, I studied a lot of photos and realized one thing that helped mine blend (though hardly great paint jobs, just paint jobs) was to use a very light wash of a dull yellow.  Seemed to work.  I'd post a picture but I somehow managed to delete from my blog (think I deleted the image on the computer without realizing.  Bases aren't textured so wouldn't be a great photo).  And they are actually horses and mules with a whole bunch of onagers waiting to get painted as zebras since I have yet to find any made in 15 mm - sometimes we just have to go with a "make work" solution.

I can imagine finding 15mm African animals could be a challenge. As for the Zebra it's funny how little attention you pay to things until you try to paint a miniature version. Obviously I've known Zebra have black and white stripes since forever but what surprised me was how intricate the striping was it isn't just a bunch of vertical lines that I had in my head. Same for the hippos in my head they where just a grey colour but once you really look at them they have quite a bit of pink/flesh colouring on their bodies. I guess you are right about the Zebra though they are going to be a bit of set dressing so maybe I shouldn't get to hung up on trying to get them perfect.

[has.been]

I think you have done a good job on the animals.
You are right, painting animals is harder than we think.
Where is the Osprey book on 'Wargaming Animals'?
I bought several tubs of children's' cheap animals, the ones that
have several different scaled beasts in. I too found the zebras
difficult, & as for the girraffes !!!!!!  I couldn't decide whether  to
paint them the 'brick' colour then carefully do the 'mortar' colour, or
paint them the 'mortar' colour, then carefully paint each 'brick'.
Several attempts before I got them to a reasonable standard.
I did get my revenge on the tub of animals. The over-scale bobcat/lynx
looking ones had their tails cut off & were painted bright blue. They now
take part in my Sci-Fi games.

[Diablo Jon]

I think you have done a good job on the animals.
You are right, painting animals is harder than we think.
Where is the Osprey book on 'Wargaming Animals'?
I bought several tubs of children's' cheap animals, the ones that
have several different scaled beasts in. I too found the zebras
difficult, & as for the girraffes !!!!!!  I couldn't decide whether  to
paint them the 'brick' colour then carefully do the 'mortar' colour, or
paint them the 'mortar' colour, then carefully paint each 'brick'.
Several attempts before I got them to a reasonable standard.
I did get my revenge on the tub of animals. The over-scale bobcat/lynx
looking ones had their tails cut off & were painted bright blue. They now
take part in my Sci-Fi games.

ah giraffes there on my list to...

I suppose I could follow your lead though and paint my Zebra bright blue, stick them in my 40K armies and call them Spacebera they might save me a headache