Little Tanks & Tiny People

I have been neglecting this blog for a little bit. Because I didnt't stop painting I now have a bit of a backlog. To start the new year with a clean slate I’ll quickly summarise what I’ve been up to the past months. Firstly, I’ve finished my Cyberpunk-themed Sisters of Battle army (pics of the full army to follow). I also made this silly F-16 Egg plane by Hasegawa. The kit happens to come with Dutch markings, but I thought the roundel was a bit too big and didn’t look right. I happened to have a set of RNLAF roundels in varying sizes, so I used those instead. I also scratchbuilt three wooden buildings for a Rohan-themed gaming board. They would also fit pretty well with an Early Medieval/Viking board. The walls of the buildings are made of packaging foam, covered in strips of card and coffee stirrers. I made the roofs out of some scrap bits of plywood and covered them in strips of towel to look like thatching. I’ve also been painting up an Athenian hoplite army. I’ve worked my wa...

Quick update: I bought and built another Sarissa Precision kit, a Dutch house to go with my Dutch farm . I also scratch-built some road sections: 9 straight sections and 1 t-junction. I kept it simple for now, but I can always add corners and other shapes later. I used 6 mm thick polystyrene, which should prevent the sections from warping. I bevelled the edges slightly and added banks using a full packet of Milliput. I then  gave the pieces a quick sanding and applied two coats of brown paint mixed with sand and coffee grounds. After letting that dry overnight, I gave the pieces a quick drybrush and then added flocking and some tufts.

I finally got around to taking pictures of the finished spectators. They are a mix of Steve Barber and Sally 4th. Both ranges have their pros and cons. The Steve Barber figures are more varied, but aren’t cast particularly well. The Sally 4th figures, on the other hand, are very clean but are all quite similar. Together, though, they add a lot of character to the amphitheatre.

Painting is done! I first primed the whole thing by hand with regular wood primer and then gave it a couple of coats of Rustoleum chalky finish furniture paint from a rattle can. According to the can, the colour is called ‘jute’. I’d call it off white or bone white, though. Anyway, I then gave the whole thing a very heavily thinned down black wash, followed by a light dusting of the ‘jute’ again and a drybrush of white.    I then painted all the details such as the arches, seats, pavement and arena. Considering the size of this thing, detailing took a fair while. I probably spent about four hours just painting the individual cobble stones on the pavement. Weathering the amphitheatre was a lot of going backwards and forwards, adding a colour, not liking it, removing most of it again, trying another colour, removing most of that as well, and so on. But I think I ended up with something pretty nice looking. I used predominantly acrylic paints, apart from a final pass with some ...

Time for a change of pace! If I’m honest, I was getting quite fed up with painting Rohan warriors. They’re very laborious to paint and there’s so many of them (12 down, 38 left to go...). I’ll get back to them at some point, but for now I need to do something completely different.   And what better project to get your mojo back than to build this epic amphitheatre by Sarissa Precision! I had been ogling it online for years, but last week it arrived on my doorstep as a birthday present from my wife. I’m not quite sure where I’ll put it once it’s done (it’s huge!), but it is insanely cool. I didn’t count the number of parts, but there’s a lot. For reference, each (semi)column consists of 12 parts and there’s 34 of them! I’ve made a few tiny changes to the design. Most significantly, I permanently attached the removable arena by gluing the entire thing onto a large sheet of polystyrene. This gave the whole piece some additional strength and also meant that I could hide the large...

So, I made some more terrain to go with my coastal fort and ship . I’m particularly pleased with how the rocks came out. I made them out of a sheet of white polystyrene foam. It’s the exact same material used in packaging, only sold in sheets for crafting. Compared to pink or blue foam, white polystyrene is a lot more difficult to work with. It’s also insanely messy! It takes a bit of practice to cut the foam in a way that you can’t see that the polystyrene consists of thousands of individual balls. Painting on a heavy coat of wall filler/spackle also helps to hide these. After cutting and applying the filler I then brushed on a coat of grey primer. I then heavily drybrushed everything with a broken white/light beige. I then gave the rocks a black wash, followed by a dark brown wash. Finally, I gave everything a light drybrush of white and added flock. For the plants I used some cheap palm trees bought on Ebay and various fake plants from the Dutch equivalent of a dollar store. Th...

  First stratchbuild of the year! I made a simple coastal fort to go with my ship the  Halve Maen . I forgot to take work-in-progress pictures, but construction was very straightforward. I started by making a rectangular box out of two 15x15 cm MDF picture frames for the top and bottom and four 18x15 cm sheets of polystyrene for the walls. The 18 cm height of the walls meant that I could divide the tower into three 6 cm tall levels. I simply hotglued these together to form the basic shape and then added a parapet using some left over blue foam. I made the parapet 3 cm high - giving the tower a total height of 21 cm - with the cut-outs being 1.5 cm high.   For the external staircase I used strips of cork that I cut from a coaster. As the coaster was 1 cm thick, six steps gave me the exact height to reach the first floor. I wish I could say that this was clever planning on my part, but I’m afraid it was completely down to luck!   After this, I added details like ...

This is a little project that I had started some time ago, but had not gotten around to finishing yet. A completely scratchbuilt windmill! Most models that you can find online are of timber windmills. I, however, wanted mine to look like it was made of plastered brick. Additionally, I wanted it to look quintessentially/stereotypically Dutch.   One characteristic of most Dutch windmills is that the main body tends to taper slightly towards the top. So how did I accomplish this? Well, by making the body out of a cheap metal cocktail shaker. Before starting I gave the shaker a light sanding, so the glue and paint would stick better. I then cut out a small base for the windmill out of a sheet of polystyrene.   The cocktail shaker is very thin-walled and provides almost no surface for gluing it to the base. I therefore cut out a circular plug out of some cork, which I hotglued into the opening of the shaker. This gave me a nice large gluing area.   With the body of the w...

Having made a Dutch merchant vessel with crew , I needed some enemies to fight them. After careful deliberation I settled on British lobsterbacks. The minis are by Firelock Games, although not from the British faction. The captain is Spanish and the troops are French (Flibustiers and Milices des Caraïbes), but after painting their coats red they look convincingly British to me.  The paint scheme is pretty straightforward: Citadel Mephiston Red for the uniforms, white for the trimmings, black for the leather and Vallejo Flat Brown 70.984 for the scabbards and gun stocks. On two of the models I replaced the white trousers with grey ones (Medium Sea Grey 70.870) to imply non-standard equipment. Finally, Glorious Gold 72.056 was used for the brass parts of the weapons and the sash and scabbard of the captain were painted Vallejo Medium Blue 70.963. I also painted up six cannons (again Firelock Games models) and scratch-built two row boats using the Gary Chalk plans that came with t...

Click here for part 1 Click here for part 2   With my new battle mat from Pwork having arrived, I now have everything to take proper pictures of the Halve Maen. All that remained to be done since my previous post was to add the masts, sails and flags. I made the masts using wooden dowels in three diameters: 8 mm for the lower masts, 6 mm for the upper masts and 4 mm for the yards. I bought them online and had to buy order them in bulk, so I have plenty left for at least another ten ships... But I’m sure they’ll come in handy for future projects.   The flags were made of aluminium tape sandwiched between two layers of regular printer paper. The aluminium tape can be manipulated to create the illusion of wind and will hold its shape, while the paper provides for a nice surface for painting. As I have no sewing skills whatsoever, my wife kindly helped me with the sails. And I think she did an amazing job! The fabric was scavenged from an old pair of linnen trousers and I th...