A Wizard's Tower (WIP)

With most of my miniatures (painted and unpainted) packed away and my hobby supplies largely out of reach due to ongoing building works in my house (dust, workmen, very limited space for the five of us to inhabit), I've been recently focused on making some scenery. Having finished the laser-cut houses I had a scratch-building itch to scratch and decided upon creating a Wizard's Tower. That's not quite true actually; I'd always wanted to make a Wizard's Tower and had never got around to it until I inadvertently picked up a plastic bottle and some other recyclable objects to put in the blue bin and thought "hold up, these could be put together to make that Wizard's Tower idea that's been shelved in my memory".

Here's where I am now with it:

For the construction, in the back of my mind I had the Fighting Fantasy illustration of Yaztromo's Tower as inspiration, that slightly asymmetrical, jutting tower with several floors leading up to some sort of magical observatory.

 

And thus this is how the build started with a plastic drinks bottle for the main structure. However I soon realised that the plastic was too flimsy and filled it with some expanding foam which had been left lying around by one of the builders. I then superglued/epoxied a few more interesting plastic packaging shapes to the exterior (including some sort of fairy light) and raised it up higher with a piece of thick cardboard tubing and some sort of water filter container. 

I then decided that I wanted to make a scenic base for it, partly for decorative purposes but also because it was very top-heavy and it needed to be stuck down on a larger stand, in this case an mdf off-cut. Some blue expanded polystyrene scraps were used to build and shape the base, a Hobbycraft skull from Halloween cut and added at an angle and then all the surrounding areas built up further with that same expanding foam (which itself was then cut and shaped to look more like rocks). Finally some cocktail sticks were poked through and a sprinkle of sand for small rubble.

Some details were needed and it just so happened that I already had a stash of resin doors and windows (I can't recall where from) and these were super-glued into place. The last stage was the addition of lots of polystyrene bricks, cut up from some unwanted furniture packaging. These were cut into roughly equal sized brick and stuck on with a glue-gun over several evenings. They were then textured by rolling a ball of silver foil over the surface (this could have been done first for ease in hindsight - or I've even seen people put them all in a bucket with a few stones and smash them around). Finally, once attached, I covered all of the polystyrene in several coats of glue to stop the primer from eating into it.

The next steps I need to address are to add some twisted wire to emulate vines creeping up the side and to add some sort of wizardy gargoyle design from my bitzbox to fill that empty plinth in the middle. Perhaps some sort of dragon or flying creature? I'm also toying with the idea of carefully suspending a ping pong ball above the parapets at the top or to make a telescope? Thoughts on this please would be much appreciated?

Lasercut House #2: to drybrush or not?

The second lasercut house is now complete and finished in double-quick time. Being such clean kits they are very easy to paint with none of the hiding of errors I usually have with scratch-built versions. Again, painting the beams black from every angle was the biggest pain and again I wished that I had sprayed them black before gluing them down. However, I'm really pleased how this one turned out, even though a quick dark grey drybrush over the beams would probably help; do you agree?

It was originally designed with a watermill attached to it's left side, but that made it too specific for me and preferred a more versatile townhouse. 

And together they both look pretty good, almost designed to go next to each other, but will of course look ace when I eventually get back into the attic and re-set my scenery set up once the proper building work in my proper house is completed.

Lasercut house #1 "Dolls House Dilemmas".

I've completed painting my first mdf laser-cut house and I'm really happy with the results. I think doing a little extra work on the design in terms of making individual roof tiles and burrowing out the mortar between stonework created enough texture to make a more realistic impression and definitely made the painting stage a little easier as texture = dry-brushing!

I spray undercoated the build in grey and then used this colour as a base for the grey in between the beams. All of the rest of the painting was completed with tubes of acrylic paint (Daler-Rowney in this case). Subsequent greys (lighter than the undercoat) were dabbed into these areas between the beams which meant  that I then needed to re-paint the timbers matt black which was incredibly tedious as that process included the face of each timber as well as the top, bottom and sides. Touching up the windows with white was of little fun either.

Thankfully painting the stonework was quick and easy, using yellow-greys to create a sandstone appearance, followed by a range of terracotta hues for the roof tiles. Both of these were easily dry-brushed with slightly lighter shades to bring out the texture and light/shadow.

The final stage, my favourite stage, is the weathering which always surprises me in how easy it is and how quickly it unifies a paint job. Successive, very dilute layers of a variety of dark greens (eg. Hunters Green - my go to weathering green) and browns such as Burnt Umber and Yellow Ochre were used to streak the weathering from top to bottom. The appearance of moss was dabbed on slightly less dilute along the bottom of the stone work and in areas of shade - for example where the chimney meets the wall and where the pillar meets the stone floor. And that was it, first one down, although I might one day decorate inside too...

Part of me thinks that is an unnesecary job when there are so many other hobby ideas and tasks to do, but the Interior Designer in me disagrees. And I quite like a photo opportunity where my models can be placed inside with rugs and barrels etc. Dolls House Dilemmas.

Lasercut MDF buildings and Salute

Earlier this month I took my first trip to Salute, having seen and heard many a great thing about the event in London. I could only visit for the afternoon, so time was short but I managed to see lots of amazing set-ups, boards, games and stalls, even if I did not have time to actually game. 

I have plenty of models to paint, so even though I was very tempted to buy some Mierce monsters or some Hasslefree adventurers or some of the other amazing (and unknown to me) company's models, I decided that I wanted to try out some of the lasercut scenery. I eventually settled upon the below, both at about £15 each from different stands; unfortunately I have forgotten the names of the brands now. Below is a three storied Tudor manor house; each layer comes apart:

As you can see, I have made a few moderations. Even though the kits are wonderful in terms of how easy they are to construct and how good they look as scale buildings, they do understandably, lack any texture. This is most obvious in the roof and and the brickwork. So I reverted to the tried and tested cereal packet cardboard shingles for the roof and decided to carve into the mortar between stones as seen below. This technique did not take as long as expected because the laser cutter had created an outline that had enough depth that meant that I could dig out a layer with my scalpel for the stone work to remain raised.

Below is a watermill model, where I just did not add the watermill to the side. I've made the same moderations as above to improve the texture of the building. I'll probably add some sand/pva for some mossy areas too.

On reflection, these mdf lasercut models are very easy to work with and relatively cheap too. They are certainly quicker to put together than any of the scratchbuilt/foamcard models that I have previously made. I think they will sit well alongside each other and I intend to continue investing time and money into both. Scratchbuilding will lend itself well to some of the more unique ideas for buildings that I have.

I also had time to enter the 'Eavier Metal speed painting competition. We were given a Mantic model, some paint (in bottles and already out on a palette, some brushes, water and 20minutes to paint. It was intense! Being out of my comfort zone (not having my own equipment) an audience (I had one woman leaning over my shoulder as I painted!) and a time limit was sweat inducing and I had to make some very quick decisions about colour schemes based upon the colours that were available. I jumped into the skin tones first, going for multiple washes and tried to paint other areas as they dried. My hand was not as steady as I was used too and I really struggled when it came to doing some quick highlights and details. The time flew by and I just about managed to finish and was lucky enough to be chosen by the judges as a winner for my group! I won a lovely Eavier Metal mug for my efforts!

Salute was great, next time I will make sure I have time to get some games of new games in and maybe meet up with a few people I know.

Painting of the buildings is underway and I will post updates on those next.