I dream of Normandie..

[Bloodsbane]

There's been a few early WIPs in other peoples' threads already, but I figured I might as well gather my WWII fiddlings in a thread of my own. Let's start out with a snapshot of where I stand with my scratch-built houses at the moment. It's all starting to come together if I do say so myself.

It's all foamcore, coffee stirrers and cardboard roofs. Bases are MDF.

First off we have the barn. There will be a simple loading crane over the second floor opening. The windows will have hatches, and the doorways will be getting doors.







Then, we have the farmers' house. This thing has eaten a handful more hours than planned, but it's been a lot of fun.
The windows are Grandt line, and I scored them from Antenociti. I already have plastic doors that fit the doorways as well. As you can see, I went back and detailed the windows some more after I started painting.











My lighting situation is atrocious, and I beg forgiveness for the crappy photos. They do their job though - they highlight all the little mistakes and kick my ass in gear to make everything look better

[ironmammoth]

Don't worry about quality of your photos, they are WIPs afterall!

Lovely building, very well done.

Just out of interest, how did you do the railing on the balcony of the house?

[Bloodsbane]

Oh yeah, the balcony railing supports are prefab as well. I nicked 'em off of ManMachine's boat project, let's hope he didn't need 'em
I'll add an URL once I know where they're from.

[zizi666]

Beautiful pieces.

[Mindenbrush]

Nice work, always good to see well put together scratchbuilt buildings 

[Bloodsbane]

Update: The balcony railing supports are the wooden staircase baluster Here!

[midismirnoff]

I really like the way you painted the wooden floor. Very realistic!

[Relic]

Looking great, I especially like to floor boarding where you have used different shades! How did you do that?

[carlos marighela]

Lovely work and the photos are fine.

[Bloodsbane]

Thanks guys!

There's no magic trick to the wooden floors, they're just painted different shades
They're tinted with washes of various brown acrylic paints. No undercoat, just watered down paint straight onto the raw wooden coffee stirring sticks. Just about every pot of brown paint I own has seen some action somewhere on here, but for future parts of this project my main palette will be narrowed down to pretty much VGC72044 Dark Flesh Tone, VGC72043 Beasty Brown, VGC72045 Charred Brown and VMC70822 Black Brown. VMC70921 English Uniform and VMC372 Chocolate Brown are great as well, but I want to keep a fairly reddish tone going.

VGC = Vallejo Game Color, VMC = Vallejo Model Color.

There'll be more houses before I'm done. I'll try to take more and better WIP pics in case my dabblings are of interest to anyone.

[joroas]

This is some nice work. 

[Sir Dryden]

Hi to all,

I agree with everybody, splendid work. I like the different shades of wood (note to self: steal that idea) but what really does it for me is the stonework on the barn. The weathering and different tones are spot on. Care to give us the recipe? (note to self: steal that too).

Yours truly,

Sir Dryden

[Burgundavia]

Not only a beautiful model, but one that is an excellent wargaming piece. I love the back balcony.

[z1pp132002]

Brilliant work, you are a superb scratch builder!!

GReg

[G2]

...but what really does it for me is the stonework on the barn. The weathering and different tones are spot on. Care to give us the recipe?

I am glad you asked this, because I have a project which I want to achieve exactly that effect. So I too want to know how you did it. Please share your secrets sensei.