Painting Progress: Tackling More Terrain

I will not pretend to have enough readers that anybody would notice, but my posting pace has slackened this year. I'll offer the same confessional apologia that opens countless hobby blogs I read: I aspire to do better. I hope to catch up on a number of posts waiting in the wings, particularly those devoted to some of the recent Scrum Club games we held earlier this year. There are hundreds of photos from those games, the best of which I'm excited to eventually share.

To help catch up with the backlog, I'll try over the next few posts to curtail some of my long-winded discussions and give the focus over to the photos, the sharing of which is mostly my motivation for even starting this blog.

Jebodiah's Shack

After my recent foray into painting a box full of 1/72nd scale lizard men, I deliberately went back to my comfort zone of painting larger terrain pieces. I had this piece in the pile for a year or more, picking it up when I discovered some of the cool pieces by the now-defunct Architects of War (I understand there is quite a tale of woe involving this local-to-me company when it over-extended itself on a Kickstarter for what honestly looked like a great game called All Quiet on the Martian Front. Miles Reidy, an investor in the company, offers a detailed take on the financial failings on his own hobby blog). With this shack now several years out of print and the manufacturer long gone, I scoured the secondary market and managed to find one copy still available at original retail price. I really fancied it as a focal point for a Strange Aeons scenario I hope to devise around it, and was pretty dogged about hunting it down. Glad I did, too, because I think it is a cool piece that can make its way into any number of milieus. 

There are some flat pools on this base that are meant for a water effect. Once I get some more experience and confidence with those, I'll give it try here, but for now I felt lucky just to get this piece painted without screwing it up too much, and so have elected to leave well enough alone.

Painting Rack

I relocated my painting station from the upstairs studio space down to the basement. I had seriously encroached into Ellen's side of our shared studio, and I could tell she was starting to struggle to continue to be gracious about it (graciousness is always her default position). When I moved down stairs, it became apparent that I had accumulated far too many supplies, especially paint, to make my new little space work. The key was to go vertical, and I found a really great laser-cut wooden paint rack made by a fella on Etsy. He even custom cut a hybrid version for me that allowed me to rack my different sized bottles of craft, Citadel, and Army Painter bottles together. The seller wasn't the best communicator in the world, and he got my order wrong the first time, but in the end I got exactly what I asked for. I stained the wood, glued it together, and loaded it up with all of my painted. I was happy to see that I still have room to add more paints, too. I bought a modified version of this model, but he makes these organizing racks in a variety of configurations.

Finally got my painting station tamed so I can get back to painting without it being such a chore. The key was buying that laser-cut tray. Before this everything was a mess shoved in boxes in multiple areas around the desk. No wonder I kinda dreaded painting stuff in this space.

Fantasy/Medieval Open-Air Market

As soon as the new paint station was set up, I rummaged through some of the boxes full of unpainted terrain projects piled nearby and pulled out a set of open-air market stalls I had purchased over a year ago. I bought these as part of a larger "diorama" set of wargame terrain pieces, including a church and some other bits. I knew it was all 3D printed when I purchased it, but I was still quite disappointed by the quality when it arrived. I own a 3D printer and have churned out some great pieces, so I know that 3D printers are capable of far better than what I received. I think my annoyance contributed to putting off painting these pieces for so long. 

But I really wanted to try the new painting station, so I got to work on these pieces, wondering if I could salvage them without spending a ton of time on them (especially if they were so ugly I'd ultimately never use them). I really pushed myself to sling the paint as fast as I could without making a complete mess of things. These pieces just were not worth lavishing a lot of time on, unlike Jebodiah's Shack.

I found to my surprise that I could paint these fast and to a passable tabletop standard. Neither the "sculpts" nor my paint job will win any awards, but I do now have 10 pieces of market/town square terrain to put in a game, which is great because I actually have some cool adobe-style buildings for a desert outpost scenario I've been itching to organize.

An example of one of the stalls and its cover/"tarp." Even after painting it, I still have no idea what the objects are being sold other than the jugs to the side.

This terrible looking awning might have worked in a modern setting (one could pretend it was machine-made of tin or something), but there's no way I could let it go as is for my gaming purposes.

As mentioned, the first thing I tried to do was paint these as fast as I could, followed by a wash, and finished off with some dry brushing. I was able to deduce that the objects in the middle are swords, but I still have no idea what is on that table to the left or right; I just picked out their shapes with some metallic paint and moved on. 

Those large plastic bases with all of their pronounced 3D printer lines and grooves weren't going to cut it, so the next step in salvaging these pieces was to glue some sand on the bases to give them an organic feel.

This sand isn't quite right either, though, so at the very end (see pics further down) I painted the sand to give it a more uniform color (the potting sand I use from Home Depot always appears to have ground up shells and other multi-colored bits of grain that do not work for me as is).

The next step was to deal with the machine-made forms of the coverings/"tarps." I cut some coffee stirrers and a bit of balsa wood square dowel and glued them over the too perfectly undulating shape of the original cover. The balsa wood beams would help give some drape to the fabric I planned to use.  

Picked these up for around $4 at Home Depot. There are 10 pieces, but I think I needed less than two for all six of the tarps I created.

To dye and stiffen the tarps, I used a bit of Mod Podge, added the color paint I wanted, and mixed in a little water. I stirred it up in the little bowl and then dunked and swished the fabric cut outs in the bowl until I had it entirely soaked (you'll want to squeeze out as much excess as you can because the fabric will soak up far too much of the glue/paint/water mixture). Just to be safe, I also added a little Mod Podge to the beams of each covering before laying the tarp on and sliding them into place. This part of the process is extremely messy, and you'll want to ensure you're not smearing paint/glue all of your models or self.

What they looked like when they were finished drying later that day. They cover the sins of the original, so that's something. I went over them with just a little dry brushing in an attempt to give them a bit of weathering and keep the fabric from looking unnaturally even in tone. Pro tip: Do NOT make your tarps/tents using paper towels, as some folks recommend. I tried it on one of these models, and it the results were so far inferior to the cloth that I ended up tearing the paper towel off and replacing it.

And here's the finished lot of 10 pieces. Surprisingly usable, especially with the forgiving distance of the "three-foot rule." They won't win any awards, but they'll give my towns and villages a little extra flavor.

Recent Acquisitions

These rules by the fellows over at the Ministry for Gentlemanly Warfare look like a lot of fun. Hopefully I can get in a game and write a review for the blog soon.

I’m not a fan of the Patreon model, but I do contribute to two, one of them being the podcast GROGNARD FILES, which has been a great pleasure to listen to over the past couple of years and to which I would happily subscribe under any funding model. As a patron at a certain funding level, I receive each year a two-volume zine collection mailed to me from Dirk and company with an awesome new Russ Nicholson cover. Looking forward to perusing this while I wait for the next monthly episode of the podcast to drop.

Vacation Gaming

Turned out I wasn't able to do any gaming except for the solo kind while on vacation with my wife Ellen (and friends Eric and Kayla) at the Outer Banks last month. Still...there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than sitting on the beach, rolling up a character, and playing a choose-you-own-adventure-style game. Combat is brutal in this game, so after dying a couple of times, I finally succumbed to a beach nap.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~