Curia Julia

Hi All, Short update today. I made good progress on board 3 (where the petrol station will be placed) today. An update on that board hopefully wont be too far away. I cut out the kerb pieces for board 3, did the footpath detail, dry brushed it up and then flocked it. All that is really left for board 3 is a couple of road markings. The above pieces are the kerbs for board 3 - they dried off nicely and the 'waviness' of the flocking on the big one has settled down. Another small project I worked on was some crates. These were a bit fiddly but after assembling, spraying and dry brushing they came pretty good! Next update should be the completion of board 3. Left on the 'to-do' list is: the Park (for the vacant area where the crates are sitting), flocking the tree bases, phone box, dumpsters, details (posters etc) and weathering for the theatre and detailing the service station. I also bought some civilians so will have to paint them up when they arrive...

After receiving the Gaslands rule book for Christmas, I thought I would take a quick break from my terrain board project and customise a few cars. For those who are unaware, Gaslands is a ruleset by Osprey Pushlishing which depicts vehicular combat. There are no line of models with this game, so players generally convert hotwheels/matchbox size cars into death-bringing machines. I have not played the game yet, but it looks fun! Also the cost, ease and fun of marking the cars is a huge draw. I was toying with the idea of only putting up certain pictures on this blog...then I thought its a learning blog and wanted to be as transparent as possible. I have never painted or converted any vehicles before (I am quite a n00b at painting miniatures as well). The first car I attempted....failed on many fronts (see below) So firstly I will say that other than the car I bought some wire and some plasticard from my local hobby store. I also used model paint. Lets s...

So progress is full steam ahead with the board. First up the theatre. I chose to paint it in a pretty plain scheme (due to talent) and it turned out pretty good. I followed much the same process as I did for the tenement buildings. I still have to do some weathering on them (with sprays), a bit more detail work and maybe print out a few movie posters as well. Then I will call this one done. The trees (from 4ground) also have got the bases they need to fit into the slots in the verge. I will flock and texture these bases to match the board. Board 4 (the one across the road from the theatre) has also received some work. Footpath pieces (which were cut out previously) were glued on, textured and painted. The roads were also finished off (markings as well) and the centre verge flocked. To give you context, in the above picture, the theatre will face the road at the bottom. The empty space on board 4 (above) will mostly have a removable urban park and will pro...

Hello all, Back to the board again. Okay so after sanding down the boards and painting them I noticed that the larger expansions of 'concrete' would need a bit of texture. Down at the local arts supply store I found some textured paint and applied it to these areas (knowing what I know now, I would have done this before I paint next time. After the texture dried (takes a while) it was onto repainting, dry brushing and weathering (with spray) the 'concrete' areas and roads. I also took the opportunity to do a pin-wash on the footpath areas. While it was good to get the painting done, the areas which are left for the buildings to fit in...shrunk with the thickness of the paint (house paint). Some sanding of the inside areas fixed the problem (I find that terrain making is two steps forward, one step back). After I was finished hacking at the finished product to get the buildings in, I flocked the verge (this went surprisingly well). ...and soon aft...

With some extra time after Christmas this year I am back into the board making. Today is a short update of the next part of my build. Due to the slow progress on the boards I decided to completely finish the two leftmost boards (with the tenement buildings (already painted) and the theatre before progressing the two rightmost boards. Basically I stuck down the roads (sandpaper), top half of the board (to create curbs and recesses for the buildings) and filled them with Spakfilla. This is in preparation for sanding the boards down, texturing and painting. I have also started painting the theatre which will be looked at in Part 3.