Season of Scenery Stuff! (1)

With only a couple of weeks left for the Season of Scenery challenge to run I thought it was maybe about time I got some stuff finished, pictures taken and posts written! The (1) in the post title is a trick to make people think there might be more posts to follow! I should maybe warn you that there are no pictures of any of Barbara’s decoupage projects featured though in case you want to stop reading now (she’s busy planning her autumn, Halloween, winter and Christmas projects)!

The first two scenery items featured for the challenge are shown above, a 20mm scale French cottage and a pig pen to go with it! These weren’t the first two items finished for this year’s challenge but they’re a good place to start with the posts. I got the cottage from the Battlescale Wargames Buildings shop on eBay in the UK and it is really nice!. It comes as a two-piece resin model and is very good quality, with no blowholes or faults in it at all! It is heavy for its size since the roof section is solid. My only criticism was that the end walls of the upper half didn’t quite match the lower half (about 0.5mm short at each end) so there was a noticeable horizontal line on each end wall when it was put together (I don’t really like lift-off roofs for buildings unless it makes them easier for me to store). I remedied this by covering the areas with Vallejo stone effect paste and matching this to the pattern already moulded into the cottage walls. This was an easy fix and I’d still rate this model as 10 out of 10!

I painted it using my usual method for white/light coloured buildings – acrylic off-white for the walls with a thinned Humbrol enamel Chocolate coat over that, with the latter then removed while damp with white spirit to leave it looking grubby and shaded! Before the wash I’d painted the woodwork in Vallejo Dark Sea Grey and the exposed stonework in Cork Brown. The roof was in Humbrol 27 Sea Grey, drybrushed in a lighter grey after the wash (which didn’t really shade it that well). Overall I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out! After my last Franco-Prussian wargame I decided I’d like a few more buildings and this one fits in well!

The picture above shows the rear of the cottage and the pig pen. I hate to admit it, but the pig pen has sat on my hobby board on my desk since before COVID! It was even based, primed and base-coated and still it never got finished, even during last year’s Season of Scenery challenge, so now was the time to get it done! I can’t remember who makes the model but it comes as a nice single piece moulding. I based it on mounting board (card edges to building bases are much more resilient to knocks I find) and then added Vallejo white pumice around the edges for texture. I painted it various colours to represent wood and rusty corrugated iron and then gave it the brown overpaint/wash treatment. I glued some cut down broom bristles and model railway reeds on the base to represent straw and hay and then added scatter grass in patches around the base. I’m happy with it and it should fit in quite well for any European setting.

Hopefully the next scenery post will feature some of my new Paraguayan War scenery!