Terrain Day

Today I thought I would tackle a few ACW buildings and a futuristic generator.

As I white washed the new barn I remembered a large model I had bought for my Birthday. It's a barn from Gettysburg and is a lovely model. However, the paint job could always do with a bit of weathering. At the time of the battle it was a working cow shed so I thought I would take it back to a used state 

Above is the pre painted model I bought from Perry's, nice but it could be improved. 

After painting the tiles different shades, I washed them with a brown to tie them all together.

For all of these models it was nice to spend a little more time on them and make them look nice. I used to blast through my terrain pieces and see them as less important. Now, however, I know the worth in setting up a nice board.

I put a lot of mud from the cows as they rubbed against the side of the barn.

Also I weathered areas that saw a lot of use like around the doors.

This barn would be great in a WWII battle too.

The log cabin got a lick of contrast paint to darken him up. I used various shades so the logs looked different colours in the walls.

Finally I used this model to try out paints I've been wanting to use for a while. Vallejo Mech paints, the results of these was a little disappointing. Most of the model was colored using contrast paints.

Concentrate all firepower on the main generator!

UPDATE: The matt varnish is now dry and now it's time to add some last details.
 

The barns looked good with their new dull varnish but the metal generator looked odd. I fixed this by using satin varnish to cover the metal paneling and gloss varnish on a few selected areas. It looks a lot better and much more like a chunk of heavy machinery now.

I have never done this before and it was a strangely very rewarding. Dropping some Kleer floor varnish into the tiny window pains gives the perfect glass effect. The windows now catch the light making them pop. Very rewarding!

The last thing is the lucky horseshoe on the door.

Fifty shades of Butternut

More Rebs come out of the woods.

Now I'm a few bases in, I've started to include casualties into the line up. This just helps make the bases more dramatic and break up the battleline.

WARNING: try not to stroke your cat while using the Dip. Those hairs will find their way on to your wet figures for sure. Lesson learnt.

It's great fun to mix up random colours by adding stronger browns to the Butternut. 

I'm also having fun painting up the raw leather of the Confederates. It's strange, but this little fact can help to power me through the painting of the bases, with loads of bases to do you have to find the perks where you can.

 The casualties are both from 1st Corps miniatures.

Mystery Box Time

what could it be? A huge box arrived today, which was odd because I don't remember ordering anything big, how exciting!

Well, after removing a whole forest of cardboard and packaging, still nothing to see.

What's that...it'll couldn't be.

 

Oh yeah I remember now, I did order a single pot of paint off eBay.

More Rebs

Another day, another unit. This time I thought I'd try out the Rich Butternut paint from Foundry. Very nice especially when put with grey.

I also tried some striped haversacks, rather than the plain white. Just a bit of detail to help give a ragged look.

This batch contained some lovely Redoubt figures.

More patches were added using the 00.5 pen.

 

Operation Rebel Yell

Another day sees another six bases painted and dipped. This batch ended up being very Butternut, I think I was just curious how the 'Rich Butternut' would look when shaded with the dip.

I tried to keep each base looking very similar in their uniform colours, this is meant to represent companies that may have been uniformed together.

Later I'll be able to place all of the similar uniformed bases together to make regiments. For example, a few regiments of mainly Butternut troops would look good as a Brigade.

I used the 00.5 marker pen to spot on some patterns on material. I also drew out a few patches which were then painted in. This is a nice trick as it adds character to figures.

The new mob join the ones from a few days ago. Painting them in threes on the bases works really well and is very rewarding.

It's fun finding similar browns to mix into the unit. Another trick I haven't tried yet is to mix the browns and the greys together to make new shades.

A lot of the figures from eBay have lost their bayonets, it's not the end of the world and the figures are still very useable.

It was a great chance to update my old paint jobs. I tried to only have a couple of blue trousers and had to repaint a lot of bread bags white. Some nice striped ones would be nice...next batch. It was good to turn a lot of the black leather equipment to a dark tanned colour.

I also used the black barrels and New wood paint to create Enfield rifles.

The real joy of this project is getting out all those old figures I've had for years and mixing them up to form bases. Redoubt make some lovely figures and together with Dixon, Foundry, Eagle miniatures, Crusader, Old Glory plus a few more, the bases have plenty of character.

I quite enjoy mixing them all up into a mob of moving men, this is a huge contrast to my late Nineties approach of having them all in the same pose.