28mm French Revolution Parisian Backdrop: Review

 While I was preoccupied by my Bavarian town project, I happened to be contacted by Denise, the talented terrain painter who had painted my Spanish Peninsular buildings. Not knowing when I might be able to get to this myself, I was happy to let her tackle this side project for me. I thought I would write a post about her work and the resin piece itself.

So this is a set from Eureka Miniatures intended for the French guillotine set (which I'm painting currently). This is a two piece set that simply sit adjacent to each other and form a 90 degree angle. My intent is simply a diorama piece for display.

Denise was able to capture a good natural look to the masonry. A natural appearance is what I had wanted. I asked for a realistic effect that was not going to be stark or cartoonish, like Games Workshop style of painting does. Since this is for a historical themed diorama, it needed to look the part.

Subtle shadowing is evident in the coloring of the masonry and the roofing shingles. The wood has a natural weathered look, as one would expect for wood exposed to the elements. Given the right photographic set up, this might look more like a photograph of a real building in an old section of Paris than a model. The painting was done perfectly for what I had asked for.

And here are the two pieces laying flat upon the Novus Designs Belgain cobble stone mat. If you enjoy beautiful terrain as much as I do and you're too busy painting figures and think you want some inspiration to fight over beautiful terrain, why not send Denise an email? steg2@aol.com If you want to see some of her other additional work and you have Instagram, you can find her under "terraingallerypainting".

15mm Bavarian Towns

 While I may not have been actively posting on this blog over the last few months, I have still been busy working on projects. One project, just finished up in January, were these Bavarian towns. I wanted suitable buildings before doing such a project and I ran across some SHQ and a few JR Miniatures buildings that seemed to work well. 

To get the look right, I studied various images of Southern German town images on the web. Remnants of such period buildings exist and they present a colorful and cheerful appearance that I wanted to imitate. As such, I tried to use colors and objects of life to give a good representation.

The walls were the one part that made me the most uncertain. At first, I wanted to go with generic rock walls. Such a look would not be entirely wrong and would offer texture and relatively little painting challenges. On the other hand, stucco or white-washed style of walls were also common for more developed areas. The lighter color of a white-washed or stucco wall does brighten it up. Had I gone with rock walls, it would just give a bit too much gray when considering the cobble stone streets.

For the walls, I used cork board along with balsa wood cut to act as posts and buttresses. The cork board has the texture and the flexibility to curve where needed. It also cuts easily and after being painted, stiffens up.

I ran across a 15mm accessory pack from Musket Miniatures that had supplies, ladders and tree stumps. I forgot to include a picture of the wagon loaded with barrels and bags. As much as I wanted to include lot of additional items, I didn't want to clutter up the town and risk not being able to place figures.

I chose to use hardboard for the base and then further stiffening that with glue and sand for the area around the town. I made sure to leave handling room along the perimeter so as to protect the walls from being pressed when being picked up.

This well on the left is from Brickdust Miniatures. The trees are removable for both storage and for game play.

Having learned from my Peninsular towns, I used the same construction for the walls and basing material. Rather than just use a more natural ground effect for inside the town, I went with the iconic cobble stone look. There are different options for this, from rubberized pieces with the cobble stone appearance or rollers with the design upon them that can be rolled over a medium to leave such "tracks". Being unsatisfied with those options for a wider area, I went with high quality printed cobble stone paper packs that are designed for a seamless fit. This turned out to be much cheaper and flatter than the other options. 

Now my Austrians have a good scenic place to invade when they attack my Bavarians.