Building a Mud Hut

After some tutoring from club mate Marty, I thought it time to give the airbrush a go in earnest on a 28mm plastic Renedra Mud Brick House to start my Crusades era terrain. So this is definitely not a Tutorial or "How To" post, rather a review of "What I did".

 First up, this kit was a challenging to put together. Beautifully detailed, it feels like the kit was designed and then the rendering added afterwards.

As a result, nothing fits together well and lots of green stuff was required to fill the gaps - luckily it is ramshackle in nature so it didn't detract badly.  I built it including additions from the optional extras pack that Renedra sells separately.

After construction, I went with a black basecoat and based it on mdf with ground work textured from a combination of wall putty and sand.

I then splodged (I think that is the technical term) white over most raised areas to help dapple the next layers.

I then iteratively went through layers of colour though I was too heavy handed with the airbrush, so all I really did was cover the whole thing over and over again. But it was fun and felt like progress nonetheless!

After all those layers it looked annoyingly uniform in colour!

In the end the whole thing looked broadly (and frustratingly) uniform anyway, so a bit of a wash was needed to bring out some detail (Army Painter Strong Tone on the ground, Soft Tone on the building)

At this stage I decided some more traditional drybrushing was needed - using a sandy colour for the base and a beige/white colour for the walls. This nicely brought out the detail of the kit.

I also picked out some detail of the exposed mud bricks to make them more prominent

Finally, it is starting to look like we are getting somewhere!

An awning (from the extras pack) helped bring the building to life, with some striping adding a splash of colour. Then some dried tufts and desert bushes, plus a few odds and ends to make it feel lived in:

So thats the start of my 28mm desert terrain and the beginnings of my airbrush adventures. Definitely very useful for larger works like terrain or base coating a large stack of miniatures.  Looking forward to developing my skills further.

I really like how the airbrush has goven a dusty layer to the bottom of the building, like the bottom of the door.

Ready for action!