Curia Julia

I got some more houses done over the past week. I used the same technique as my previous post. For the eagle-eyed among you I used a lighter mix of paints (mentioned in the previous post) on the larger house and the original mix of paints on the smaller store. The more I look at it I think the original mix has better contrast and will use it going forward. I also think the big house may need some more rougher (sandy) areas  to give it more variation. So in the future I will probably be more liberal with the sand, like I was on the store.

Recently I received a bunch of buildings from Charlie Foxtrot and had some time to work on them. I have a few buildings to fill out the table. Not having done these before I decided start and finish one before having more a production line. I followed Charlie Foxtrot's tutorial which can be found on their blog. The tough part for me was to find some colours that suited as I am in Australia and the tutorial was UK based. Today I chose to start with the relatively small stables. First some easy assembly, so basically PVA to bond the MDF and superglue for the Resin to MDF pieces. All the buildings come with pretty good instructions and only the resin pieces need a bit of persuasion to fit! The roof comes in one piece of solid resin, its really nice! After assembly its on to filler. I used the same 'Spakfilla' from Bunnings I used on my urban boards. Basically a thin coat over most of the model leaving a few areas blank. Once dried, roughly sand down ...

Over the past few days I managed to finish off the board. First up was finishing the spray. After which I started dry-brushing. First with skeleton bone and then lighter. Even though it was the same colour combination used on the bases of my vineyard stands it turned out a bit more red than I wanted. This in turn meant that I had to drybrush a bit more. After that I added a mixture of light/burnt grass from woodland scenics in patches. When it dried I sprayed it all down with PVA to seal it in. Overall I am pretty happy with the outcome. Sure the colour isn't exactly right and the grass doesn't fully match up across the board joints (something I can fix later if it bothers me) but when I got used to them and put some figures and terrain on them they really work well (for a first try anyway). The colours in the last picture most truly represent how they ended up (the top 2 are a bit too red). This concludes the board build but there is plenty more to do - pai...

When I started painting miniatures it took me a while to get the hang of it. When I finally started to conquer my fears, I thought how hard could vehicles be especially given their size. Well the first vehicle I painted, a StuG III (my favourite AFV BTW), it was a disaster. The little I learnt from painting figures did not translate. This put me back to square one and I then concentrated on painting only figures and put vehicles, like I used to minis, in the too hard basket, something I would never be able to do. Well after painting a few US vehicles and, now with confidence, ordering a couple more I decided to go back and look at my first StuG. So of course I was nervous and wanted to go a good job originally. It was also my favourite vehicle and wanted to do it justice. I bought it, assembled it (which I had not done much of before) and then decided on a colour. I didn't really care that much for historical 'down to the commanders buttons' I just wanted to see how I...

On the weekend I decided to make a start on making the actual board everything will go on to. After long deliberation I decided to go with a 4ft x 4ft (120cm~ x 120xm~) board, basically because of size. I plan to build two 1ft x 2ft extensions in the future so I have a 5ft x 4ft board to give me a few more game options. I went to the local hardware store and bought some 12mm thick MDF boards and cut them into four 2ft x 2ft squares. Before doing this I researched a little and for anyone looking to build their board for the first time I highly recommend boards over 10mm in thickness. As you will see later you can texture them however you want with no fear of warping. First, and probably unnecessary step was to paint the edges of the boards black. Not only does this make them look nice but I find it hides the gaps in the middle of the board better than natural wood colour (it at least makes the gaps look more purposeful). A lot of tutorials said I should paint them with h...

Today a short update. I managed to get the crew for the Willy's jeep finished. I found these Rubicon models a bit more difficult than usual to paint, they seemed a bit rough and not as pronounced. I am not the greatest painter so I need all the help I can get from the models! Had a lot of fun with this little project though!

Just a quick update. I have finished painting the jeep! It was a fun little project. After the M8 and now the jeep I am not sure why I dreaded painting vehicles they are a lot more fun and less effort then miniatures. After this I realised I really enjoy dry-brushing. For how much effort you put in, you get a lot back! Anyway the pictures are below! In Part 2 I will finish up the crew and show the complete product.