Setting The Scene(ry)!

Dave over at Wargamesculptors blog is running the Season of Scenery community challenge again this year and I’m looking forward to participating, mainly so I can try and get some of the scenery finished that I started as part of last year’s challenge!

Last year I made the decision to concentrate on scenery for my Paraguayan War project, since I hadn’t really done anything specific for it before then. First bits done were two Paraguayan chatas, shallow draught gun barges, along with their crews.

Next bits done were two large gun positions, some straight fortified parapet lengths, a watchtower and a powder magazine (made from part of an egg carton)! I also made a start on some buildings (shown in the picture below), but only got the basic shells finished (using 1.5mm art board).

Having spent two months doing scenery, I was happy to get back on to painting figures and vehicles, knowing that I’d stashed these buildings safely away to finish “at a later date”. That later date is now (hopefully)! These buildings are going to use roofs from other buildings I’ve got – the four smaller buildings use thatched roofs for Vietnam buildings that also need painting, while the larger building uses a scratchbuilt tiled roof for one of my Balkan Wars buildings. So, after working on these buildings for this year’s challenge, how far have I got?

At a casual glance, the buildings don’t appear much different from how they looked last year (see above – I’ve only shown two of the buildings, but they are now all in a similar state). I’ve now completely covered the walls in a Vallejo textured stone medium to give them a rustic rendered/mud-daubed finish, shutters and doors have been added and the bases have been covered in a Vallejo pumice/paint texture to represent earth. These finishes and the shutters and doors are white so it’s not obvious that they’ve been added, with the exception of the woven grass shutters added to the two smallest buildings (one of them on the left in the picture). I’d painted parts of the walls inside the buildings black last year before some of the strengtheners were added, so the next stage this year is to paint all of the interiors black. After that I can prime the outside walls and make a start on putting paint on proper!

While I’ve been doing these, my wife’s kept going with her decoupage projects and she asked me if I could help out.

Her latest project is a fairy door (shown above next to a jar I quite like that she’s decorated with a map of Africa and a leopard). The door’s not finished yet but leaning against it you can see a miniature traditional broom and that’s my contribution! A piece of 3mm wood dowel and some bristles from a yard broom (that I’ve had stashed for years and use for thatched roofs), held together with superglue (the black thread is more for show). I said it might look a little large when compared to the door but I have it on good authority that if a broom’s going to be used for flying, bigger is better and who am I to argue!