New Terrain

The last couple of weeks I have been getting focused for the upcoming Painting Challenge.  I usually waste a fair bit of my hobby time during the challenge prepping figures.  This time I have a better plan so I am trying to get my figs cleaned up, on bases and undercoated early. However, that does get rather tiresome, so I decided to also progress some terrain pieces (noting that terrain items are not part of the painting challenge anyway).

First up is the Warlord Ruined Farmhouse set, which I did as two different buildings for flexibility.  Its a really nice plastic model with really lovely detail including the remnants of a second floor.  I also added a few extra beams to the roof along the way.

I also decided to ditch the chimney section - its very nice on the outward side but it has been sculpted hollow so that no matter where you place it you can see inside it from the holes in the wall. Rather frustrating really.

The second, smaller building was originally intended to be brighter with coloured, plastered walls. Unfortunately that turned out rather horribly.  So instead I scrubbed the majority of that off, back to the black undercoat but was careful to leave some still there when I bust up the grey dry brushing effect and added some smoke effects.  I like the realistic splashes of colour it leaves, which are vivid on the table, and which suggest the houses's former condition.

I also completed the ruined walls and debris set that I picked up at MOAB last month - painted in a month, a new record!

I went with a black undercoat, followed by far too many layers of drybrushing in ever lighter colours of grey.  That, inevitably, looked way too uniform and boring.  So I dug out my weathering chalks to add some splashed of colour.  That added a nice, dusty look but the terrain lost a lot of depth.  I added a dark ink for shadows, which washed the chalk away - ugh.  We eventually got somewhere near where we wanted to be but it was a love/hate relationship with them.

After fighting for days in the ruins of Arnhem, this para realises he might need some more clever hat camouflage 

Sadly, this terrain project saw a significant loss, forcing a morale check: I dropped and broke my paint water jar of 20 years.  In fact, it was one of my daughter's first solid food jars.  With all that history and colour splodges from old projects, it was like loosing an old friend :-(

Luckily, it has been the Oktoberfest season.  This gave me a +1 sauerkraut re-roll, which I passed easily to push on!