Medieval cottage - completed.

The completed cottage for my medieval figures - to be used with my HYW and Burgundians. I'm happy with the finished piece, as I usually prefer figure painting but it's been fun to do. However the sculpted details on the Hudson and Allen buildings are so good that it makes the task a lot easier to look authentic.

I've added plenty of foliage - using John Boadle's work as my reference points - which hopefully helps give the buildings and fences a sense of being well established. I can get three of my 60mm square bases, i.e. a single unit, into the enclosure as planned. The barrels, baskets and tools etc are a mix of stuff which I had lying around to use. Beehives seem to have come out OK.

 "So what's that Eddie Grundy been up to this week then?"

 "Just checking on the bees, honey"

"Now, did I lock the front door?"

I've a couple more H&A buildings left to do as another small farm, but will come back to them another time.

Cottage - WIP.

Quick interim update. As Darrell requested on my last posting, I've been slapping the paint on!

The main areas now have some paint applied; the fences are done as is the groundwork, prior to grasses being stuck on, which will be one of the last stages. The lovely trees are made by John Boadle and have been waiting for a model such as this to be 'planted', I merely added some lighter colour flock to one of them for variation.

The walls of the cottage are also done. The colours used are Formula P3 Menoth White Base (I like the P3 paints as they are nice and thick and cover really well), this is washed with GW Ogryn Flesh (annoyingly no longer available) and then a drybrush of Vallejo's Iraqi Sand. Some green wash at the base of some walls tries to represent a bit of rising damp.

I've also created a couple of beehives, which are ready for painting. These are cast thimbles - small ones used as Monopoly pieces and were purchased from ebay - with string glued on and a hole drilled in. Hopefully when painted they'll be sufficiently convincing.

I'm hoping that the finished cottage may see it's debut at the Cravant game that will be at the Lance and Longbow stand at Vapnartak show in York Racecourse next Sunday.
We'll see....

Medieval Cottage

After another hiatus for this blog, I've started work on cottage to extend my real estate a little. These are exquisite Hudson and Allen buildings that I've had for a long while, before getting on with them. The motivation comes from the wonderful models completed by John Boadle for Dave Imrie's collection, to be seen here. 

The cottage is two buildings stuck together to create an abode of a more prosperous farmer. These are photos of the first stage of work; I've added a wooden gateway and high fence to the front (Kingmaker castings from their Hussite wagons) and lower wattle fencing (Renedra plastics) to the rear and hedge to the gap at the side. I should be able to get three of my bases of figures in the enclosed yard/garden.  I'll place some tools, barrels etc around too - am trying to disguise some miniature thimbles look like convincing medieval beehives at the moment.

The wooden frame of the cottage has been drybrushed in shades of grey (...!) and the first coat for the rendering applied - this looks very bright at this stage, but it'll be washed over to tone down, before highlighting whiter.

Will keep some more progress posts a-coming.