La Belle Alliance Part Four

Hello There! I have made some progress on the La Belle Alliance building. The previous part is here. Since then I have washed the whole in a watered down wash of black paint. The tutorial that I have been following suggests using ink. In the past I have found that inks do have a habit of fading a bit. This was a different colour ink and on figures. In this case I presume that a wash of Vallejo 950 black paint would suffice. I applied a wash of watered down black paint to all the bricks and then taken some 400 grit sand paper and rubbed all the bricks down. I wondered what this would achieve but could see that the concave shape of the bricks caused by the embossing process was alleviated. The bricks had a flatter surface now.

I was following the instructions from tutorial by Emmanuel Nouaillier in the January 2026 edition on Continental Modeller.

It was at this point that I realised that I had missed a step out!

After embossing the foam core he recommends airbrushing the surface with two layers of Humbrol 'Neutral Grey' enamel paint. I feel an Vallejo equivalent would suffice. Anyway I inadvertently missed this step out. This did cause a few difficulties later.

When this is dry I then used various colours dry brushed on the surface. They included 982 cavalry brown, (main colour), 909 vermillion, 829 amarantha red, 957 flat red and mixed some of these colours with a small amount of black to obtain a number of different shades.

I would suggest when applying a vastly different shade to dry brush along the brick course as when a wall is built the bricks are usually taken from a pack and different shades of brick are usually present longitudinally. Some brickies do mix the brick packs before they lay them but this does not always happen.

This is the point that I realised what the airbrush layer of grey was for. The bricks, even after being light sanded had a series of groves in the surface. Although this was realistic the black wash was not adequate to fill this grooves in the brick surface. I applied a second black wash, were I could see this problem, to fill these creases. 

Here the end of the building has had a layer of white weathering powders applied and the powder has been pushed into the mortar joints using a dry brushing brush using a stippling action. There are some bricks that have a darker shade. This is a combination of an addition black wash and, as I felt the white mortar was too stark so mixed a black and and dust colour weather powders together to dull this white down.

Here is what the side looked like after just applying the white weathering powders. As you can see the powder, despite having a damp, (not wet!), kitchen towel, dabbed over them, the weathering powder tends to be trapped in the pitted surface of the bricks. I got over this by reapplying the dry brush colours over this. When happy with the finish I applied fixer for the weathering powder.

Here is a closer view of the side of the building before the reapplication of the brick colour. For added realism I picked out the odd brick suggesting that it had 'blown' and the frost had damaged the front of the brick.

I hope to have all four sides of brickwork completed by the end of the week and start the window frames and doors started.

La Belle Alliance Build Part Three

Hello There! I have now started to emboss the foamcore with bricks. Part two of this build is here. 

I rectified my first mistake today! I fitted the window frames as far forward as I thought was required. Then I peeled off the paper on that side of the foamcore and realised that the frames were too far forward. I have since trimmed them back and and replaced the wood grain with the tip of the scalpel.

For the door and window frames of the other side of the building I remembered what had happened with the other side and removed the paper around them before I fitted everything. I also cut the walls for the end extension and got some blank pieces to act as stiffeners for the buildings.  

I found an easier way to emboss the bricks on the end of the building. Usually I use a steel ruler to act as a guide but as the end was already glued to the end of the main building I found I had 'run out of hands' to hold the building, steel rulers and the brick embosser. 

Instead I used a pencil to mark a guide line so that I could see if I was deviating from a straight course of bricks.

After making the bars which go across the lower part of each window I had to cut the protruding bars which stuck out of the top and bottom of their frame. I had to wait for the plastic liquid glue had set and dried. This picture is purely descriptive and I used the scalpel again. I did hold the piece as I cut it!

The next part will include fitting the building together and starting the painting.

La Belle Alliance Build Part Two

Hello There! I have made some more progress on the build. The start of the build is here.  After starting to cut out the spaces for the doors and windows I found that the width of the gaps for the doorframes and window frames were too small for the front of the building.

Using the grid on the graph paper I was able to widen them both a standard size. I use a sharp scalpel to cut the openings.

During this I made one cut which while it was 'clean' it was not square so the subsequent door and frame would not have sat correctly. In the picture below the left hand cut on the door is misaligned. You can see the mixed Miliputt on the right to correct this.

Here I have put the miliputt in place and fitted the door frame. I waited for this to set and then glued both in place with gel superglue.

I used an engineers square to get both in the right position.

Concerning the timber for the doors and windows, I used a suede brush and then a wire brush to impress a wood grain into the plastistrut. To make this deeper and more pronounced I then ran the tip of a pointed scalpel along as well. This also gave you less chance of running of the side off the plastistrut as the existing small grooves from the wire brushes provided a guide. 

The grooves along the outside edge of the door frame were made using a pointed scalpel again with the plastistrut placed flat on a cutting board and then run along the edge.

The windows are in two parts. The top part is leaded and the lower part is guarded with iron bars which are held in place by horizontal beams against the transom of the frame. I cut the upper and lower parts of the horizontal beams that the bars will fit into. I cut them the same length and held them together while I drilled holes through them so the vertical bars would be vertical. (I had to do this twice so they were parallel!).

With the window bars fitted I started on the doors. These were also made from plasticard and a wood grain finish was added as before. the uprights were added to two parallel beaks, as seen above.

I then peeled off the surface card on the foam.

With all the doors and windows fitted I began to emboss the bricks onto the surface. This was done with the shaped ferrule of an old paint brush . A six inch steel rule was used to maintain a straight line for the bricks.

In the next part I hope to start the priming and painting.

La Belle Alliance Build Part One

Hello there! I have started revamping some buildings associated with The Battle of Waterloo. I have begun with Napoleons headquarters so that I can judge how best to do this work so that I can progress with the other buildings, Hougoumont and La Haie Sainte. 

I started off with this. I started by stripping the doors and windows and removing the roof and end extension.

This gave me the bare bones of the foam board shell. Here I have added some depth to each end as I had completed the next step below.

I searched the internet for reference material. I found that some representations of this building had made a number of mistakes as there was a few differences to what the building looked like during the battle and after a number of changes had been made.

The sepia illustration above was the most accurate I could find which was contemporary with the battle. I was completed a few months after the battle.

The black and white picture is from Adkins 'The Waterloo Companion' That shows some smaller windows under the eaves which were a later addition. Lastly on the front facing the road the left hand doorway was bricked up. In most models it is a door.

There does not appear to be any detailed pictures of the rear of the building. There is a well and a separate building behind but this is not included in this work.

I obtained some graph paper and started a scale drawing with the reference information I had. I also needed to take into account the dimensions of the foam board model I had to work with and the spacing of the doors and windows to make them look right.

Once that was done I then photocopied the plans and glued them to a sheet of Canson Foamboard. This is a much higher quality foam board than what is available from the likes of Hobbycraft. It is denser and is sandwiched with two sheets of cartridge paper. It is much easier to peel of and leaved a clean area which can be impressed with brick much more easily.

The wider dimensions, between the above plan and the foamcore shell was different. The plan being much wider. I added some further width by cutting some cheaper foamcore board a little smaller than what was already there and glued them to each end. The final ends where cut in Canson foamboard so I could impress a brick end to it later.

This also gave me the final width for the front and back and ensured that it would all fit together with no overlapping.

As you can see above I have started to cut out the doors and windows. This gave me the opportunity top enlarge them, to suit 28mm figures more easily and take into account the thickness of the plasticard which will be the door surrounds.

Next I will fit the doors and windows