Another Building

I had so much fun with the Bakehouse that I decided to do another building, this time a bit smaller and simpler. I wanted some very rough drystone huts, inspired by this; 

"Four tumbledown one-room houses of un-mortared stone surrounded an empty sheepfold and a well.  The houses were roofed with sod, the windows shuttered with ragged pieces of hide"

Clash of Kings p185

I remembered the Sod Houses in the old 'Tragedy of McDeath' warhammer pack and thought these might be about the right size and shape. I don't think they made it over to the Warhammer Townscape set, but I still had copies of my original, and I even found my first attempt at building one of them. 

One of the sod houses from McDeath made, as was all my terrain at the time from thick card covered in filler.

There are two different huts in McDeath that do duty for the clans in the first game, the malters in the second, and the orcs and goblins in the third.  I chose the smaller as a base to see if my ideas worked. 

The walls are made from offcuts of XPS foam. When I make some more I'll cut pieces specially, these pieces were slightly different widths and in some cases of varying thickness. 

I traced the plan onto the foam, cut it out with a sharp craft knife and then glued it, pinning it and putting rubber bands round it to keep it square (ish).

I glued some card on the top to help keep things together for the texturing stage.  This will come off later as the original has a timber frame below the roof, so I'll add some balsa. 

Once the glue was dry I drew on a very rough stone pattern with a pencil, then cut into the foam along these lines. Then I deepened the gaps with a sharp pencil. 

I textured the foam with a ball of foil, but I felt it still looked too flat. So using a filing stick I pushed some of the stones further in and also rounded the edges to make the stone look more worn. Now I think it looks pretty good. 

I'll need to give the whole thing a coat of modpodge to strengthen the foam.  There are some bits of balsa to add for the various wooden features.

Then I have to think how to model a sod roof.  Has anyone done this?  If so, please share your techniques.

The Great Terrain Build Off- part six

I've finally finished the Bakehouse. I took longer than I thought, partly because I kept 'messing' with  it, hoping to improve it, but probably making it worse.

I did have a minor disaster when I gave the whole building a wash. This is a step I do as standard when making dungeon terrain, but for the bakehouse I think it made everything too dark, and killed the rather nice brownish tan I had.

Trial painted panels, I went for the one on the left

Still, a couple of drybrushes later and I don't think it looks too bad.  I also added some 'bits' to the base to reinforce the story behind it.   

The woodpile, very important for the bakehouse ovens.  Sticks dried and coated in PVA, then washed in Army Painter soft tone.  I also painted up an axe, but it's gone missing.

That chimney looks suitably impressive

Barrels of something important to the baking, or maybe just small beer for the baker.  Renedra barrels, with a poor join between the two halves.

Sacks of flour ready for use, kitchen towel with a suitable texture folded and soaked in water and PVA glue.

The least interesting angle of the building

The windows were painted black, then when all the rest of the painting, washing and drybrushing was finished, I carefully painted white between the glazing bars.  When everything was dry I used a tip from Merjin's Another Wargaming Blog, Citadel Soulstone Blue for the glass.  I haven't quite got this right, but I'm please with the results, and I'll certainly use this technique again in the future.

I added some moss made from old sawdust flock to the roof and washed some green ink along the edges of the timbers, anywhere where I felt dripping water would allow algae to grow.

If you think the idea of a bakehouse or bakery sounds a bit modern, they date back to at least early medieval times.  It was common practice to leave either flour or unbaked loaves to be baked.  Loaves or cakes would be marked, to identify them after baking.  This is why, in the nursery rhyme 'Pat-a-cake' the cake is marked with a 'B'. 

Well this was never really a competition, but I have enjoyed building this along with Merlin, and seeing how different they turned out. You can see his version here. I have thought what I want to build next, though I may do some very ordinary buildings to try something out first.