Okay the titles is a bit misleading but the site editor said put something catchy and a towel does feature in this weeks blog.
I recently purchased a small number of Dark Age buildings from Sarissa to extend my scenery collection for SAGA. So far I have only put together a couple of them (see my last blog entry). What I think let them down was the rather bland roof (admittedly MDF does limit your texturing options) and so I searched the web for ideas as to how to create a thatched effect.
I did see someone make use of a towel to produce the effect (cannot recall who and so cannot give them credit here I'm afraid) and so I thought I'd give that a go, and here is how I did it.
Firstly I cut strips of towel the length of the roof and about 2cm wide.
These were then attached to the roof using a generous amount of PVA, starting from the bottom of the roof and working up allowing the upper strips to overlap the lower ones.
Once all of the roof was covered and the glue dry I trimmed the overlaps, which the picture below fails to show lol.
The next step was to make the roofing less 'fluffy' and more thatch like. This was done by making a watered down PVA mix and brushing this onto the toweling using a toothbrush, brushing in a downwards direction.
Once the roof was thoroughly dry it was time to paint, and I decided to try a different method on each of the two roofs I had 'thatched'.
The first used an acrylic bases coat with a subsequent wash and highlight.
The second used a contrast paint.
And this is how they turned out.....
In the picture I think the right hand roof looks better (painted with acrylics and wash) - probably because of the texture, however when you look at them on the table at typical gaming distance I think the contrast looks better, that said using contrasts for projects like this can become a little costly.
The roofing project was actually just a side task this week, my focus really was on getting a second regiments of 18th Century infantry finished, and I have to say I did that quite efficiently.
Here they are...
I'm actually not finding these too onerous to paint, I think it is because the way the figures are sculpted lends itself really well to the use of contrast paints which I use to do 90% of each figure.
I have also managed to fit in a couple of other scenery tasks whilst waiting for coats of paint to dry.
Firstly I've assembled and painted some picket fencing to use with my wild west scenery.
These are produced by Rubicon Models and I purchased mine from Great Escape Games.
I sprayed these with a white undercoat, then brushed over a Agrax Earthshade wash (my current go too wash) and finally dry-brushed them white, I think they look okay but in hindsight I probably should have washed with a slightly lighter colour so they would look whiter post dry brush.
Secondly I've started work colouring the MDF Sci-fi scenery I had assembled last blog.
The support struts were undercoated with a Leadbeltcher spray, which gave them a nice metal appearance but I ultimately wanted something less clean and new.
I tried a few ways to achieve this, washing one set of supports with (you've guessed it) Agrax Earthshade and sprayed another with an Army Painter weathering spray - neither of these came close to achieving the effect I wanted.
I then stumbled across a Citadel technical paint called Typhus Corrosion whilst I was preparing a paint replenishment order with The Outpost ( a little plug for them there as I've always had great service from them). This not only brought the support to the right level of griminess I wanted but also gave a small amount of texture to the flat MDF surface which I was then able to drybrush with an orange/rust colour (I will say however, that this type of technical paint does ruin the applying brush, fortunately I had a couple of brushes that were no longer fit for purpose and so were sacrificed).
I'm not sure the photos below show the full effect.
And then I thought I'd add some colour to one of the static pieces, and was quite happy with the way it came out, so much so that I'm probably not going to weather the top.
That's all folks!!
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