Wednesday night at the Mill

Another scenery build night. Andy's on duty on his day (erm, and night) job, so there was just me, Rob and Andrew, making another inroad into the TTS Venice buildings. Almost done now, I think - mostly down to a lot of door and window frames, shutters and fine detail.

Speaking of which:

I picked up a pack of Staedtler fine line pens, which work really well for prettying up engraved details. Not least because the laser does leave a very slight dip where it draws the line, and it's enough to catch the tip of the pen if you accidentally try and stray outside.
I can do colouring in, me :D

Boxes to put things in....

Postman delivered my KR Multicase order this morning :D

Have removed the Saxons and British from their Really Useful boxes, and pretty much filled the box with foot and a few cavalry that haven't made it on the table yet. Also flagged a bunch of stuff for repair, which is going to be Saturday's project, I think, if I can find enough small shields and wire spears :D

Look. A box! With lots of
blue foam trays in it.

I also basecoated some 28mm boxes from the TT Combat Venice set - strictly I suppose they're crates but who cares. They need some drybrushing and in a couple of cases picking out rope handles, but all in all they're nice resin models. And I have a pile more coming from Annie at Bad Squiddo tomorrow!
 

Smaller scale boxes!

If this is Wednesday, it must be....

....scenery night.

Andrew and AndyM dropped by tonight, so while Andrew painted stonework and shutters, Andy and I set to work on the grape-box bridge.

Bridge ramp design - using Apple Pages as my decent CAD package doesn't run on the studio MacBook. The black line is the 5mm foam board decking, the green (bounded by the yellow) marks the side plates, and the lower blue triangle the supports...

...yielding a pair of templates like so. 

And here's the finished result. 

Also note the detailing on the sides (card cutouts), and the guttering on the deck (a side effect of the way the box is made :D)

Finishing off the Dark Ops sloop

All done:

Burnt Umber acrylic on all the external wood, plus a 4Ground Glazed Tile Red trim line on the hull plus the stern decoration and porthole trim. Added some 4Ground Gold detail on the stern roundel. Light wash of Vallejo Sepia Shade wash on the deck planking just to cut the 'new' look. Burnt Umber + wash on the mast and yard.

Removed the slightly clunky MDF assembly that holds the yard across the mast, filed a flat on both where they join, wood-glue'd them together then wound thread around the join. If I'm feeling really adventurous I may try some thread rigging :D

And there she is in port.

If anyone's interested in the kit, it's available here.

(Also did a bit of touchup on the pink stucco from yesterday :D)

If this is Wednesday it must be Venice...

Rob and Andrew dropped round to beat up on the TTCombat Venice paintwork some more.

We were doing a lot of 'fix this on all buildings that need this' so there's not a lot of finished stuff to show, but....

Dark Ops small sloop - nice MDF kit, except that a couple of the trickier bits had a tendency to delaminate, and I am going to change how the mast and yard are fitted to each other, 

Some classic Venetian pink stucco. Needs a touch up and probably a second coat.

More Venice

It's been the kind of day where I don't really want to see a computer again for the evening, so wielding a brush was very therapeutic.

Intentionally a bit garish, cause, well, some bits of Venice are.

Walls are AP Necrotic Flesh, stone highlights and frames AP Skeleton Bone, woodwork 4Ground Glazed Tile Red.

Another building finished

Rapunzel! Rapunzel!....

That's TTCombat's rather impressive tower done - mostly done last night, but the last bits of detail work polished off after work this evening. Largely AP Fur Brown, with AP Skeleton Bone stonework and PSC Field Grey roof. Wooden doors are AP Werewolf Brown, except for the downstairs one which is AP Weapon Bronze. Spot brick details are Fur Brown 50/50 mixed with either Skeleton Bone or Werewolf Brown to produce a range of shades.

Undecided as to whether a light wash is needed.

The astute will also notice I have more bookcases, thanks to a seller on the local Facebook Marketplace (and AndyM for helping me collect them). Not in their final places, as they need some holes cut in the backs before they can go on the long wall, to allow access to what were originally sensibly placed sockets!

Grapes, anyone?

Anne brought home a large box of grapes last week.

A laser cut MDF box of grapes from Tesco.

While pondering the Venice scenery laid out on the studio table I had an idea, and since Wednesdays are scenery-building days, AndyM dropped round with a few tools and we had a bit of a play.., (By then we had two boxes!)

A box. The grapes were excellent, BTW. 

Some work with a jigsaw later we have the beginnings of a big bridge.
 Foolishly, I forgot to take the photo after we’d added foam board decking and sides, but it’s starting to look pretty good.  

More compendium, more painting Venice

Transferred my notes from last night into the Compendium document. Need to step back and decide if the Terrain section needs to move.

Also,. painted another TTCombat building in a combination of lunch break and waiting-for-Anne-to-get-home break. This one, classic Venetian pink/terracotta (actually AP Barbarian Flesh!) stucco. The chequered tiled balcony is (obviously) a laser printed image glued down. It's done bar needing a few roof tiles picking out in different reds.

I also undercoated three more buildings, another in that, and two in AP Desert Yellow, for detailing tomorrow.

Sunday Dux...

Ducking in and out of the Ashes coverage and the Solheim Cup (what a finish!), I got four things crossed off the todo list (one by going 'no that's not necessary, but the thoughts I had need merging elsewhere' :D).

Various things finished, including a reformat of one of Rich's articles from a Summer Special, and quite a bit of thinking and hacking together spreadsheets as well, to see if I'd got my maths right (surprisingly, yes!).

Also built, in a few screen breaks, the TTCombat Streets of Venice jetties kit. Basically lots of three-piece MDF sections (first chance to use the 1-2-3 blocks to support stuff while gluing!), and a rough overbrush with Hobbycraft Burnt Umber acrylic.

So, anyway, that's only another half dozen things left to cross off the to-do list, plus I'm hopefully running a playtest of a scenario and a couple of extra rules down the club tomorrow.

Sarissa Streets of Rome^H^H^H^HVenice Workshops

Ok, I lied. Change of plan as Anne has volunteered to do a Sunday shift 9-7 (her vet surgery pays good overtime) so I have all day to work on the Dux Compendium tomorrow. Besides, a parcel from Sarissa arrived in the post this morning, while we were painting a couple of bits of the outside wall of the studio (that's 1:1 scale painting) that needed it, and... well... I just had to.

A (very) small gripe about the TT Combat Venice range is that most of the buildings are residential, and I wanted some dockside buildings. So I went for a couple of Sarissa Streets of Rome buildings - specifically this one and the warehouses. And given my grumbles yesterday, I got out the spray cans and masking tape...

Sarissa's usual packaging...

Ahh. The smell of fresh hewn MDF...

Ok - doors sprayed with AP Chaotic Red and masked off.

Base sprayed with Halfords grey primer 

That's actually GW Chaos Bone - I really must find a cheaper off-white primer that's paler than AP Skeleton Bone...

101 uses for a 1-2-3 block, number 98 - holding the awning struts while they dry on the sprue. 

Frames pre-sprayed with AP Chaotic Red and then attached. As you can see, the masking tape leaked a bit when I did the Chaos Bone... but never mind. 

I'll touch those up later (and stick that odd corner down properly right now!).

Roof sprayed with PSC Field Grey, which is quite a decent slate-ish colour, and usefully I have matches for it, for touch-up. Base has been washed with Vallejo Sepia Shade.The whole thing needs a little touch up in a few places, and maybe some weathering on the roof, but that's pretty much all done without the aid of a brush (except for the PVA :D).

Also, usefully, it's almost exactly 3 blocks of the TTCombat street sections long, and a bit less than two wide (giving an alley down the back). I may add some bollards as scatter scenery.

One building finished

...mostly because I wanted to see how long it took, and where the pitfalls were.

Mostly, the fact that greyboard soaks up a LOT of paint, and you don't see the final colour till it dries, and cut edges just don't take paint. I need to do the roof bottom edge again. Probably more than once.

With hindsight I'd give serious thought to pre-spraying everything possible before starting gluing stuff :D

Anyway, here we are. I also cut back the sepia wash on a few test street pieces with 200 grade sandpaper and added some AK slime green bits. Not doing any more this week - Dux Compendium tomorrow.

A mix of Wilko tester pots (the stucco and stonework), 4Ground paints (the shutters, individual bricks and tiles), AP Uniform Grey and Fur Broan(the steps) and AP metallics (the door).

I actually braved a 3D effect on the door (copper, bronze highlights, 50/50 copper/dark gunmetal shadow), and gave it a very light wash in some of the corners of a verdigris-type shade.

Streets finished (just about)

Since I was on a roll, I finished off the last of the Venice street pieces, ink-washed them and added some waterline algae using green paint and a piece of ex-Battlefront blister pack sponge.

Before wash...

After, but still drying.
Annoyingly, there are brush marks on some pieces once they've dried, which I'm still debating how to deal with. Definitely not 100% happy.

The whole lot...

...with waterline algae.

More TTCombat Streets of Venice

...with help from (and a good natter with) Andrew from the club.

It's interesting that I can't find anyone online who's blogged or videoed a painted set of these.

So... Gallery of stuff to follow....

Lazy man's distressed brick, using a couple of AP spray primers (it's hard to shoot one handed while wielding a spray can - I really need a spray booth!) Before anyone comments on the video, the spatter on the window frame behind is not recent, it's from an accident with a can of dark grey Rustoleum texture paint several years ago, and it's a swine to shift (as my wife keeps reminding me :D).

Masking off the brick prior to spraying the grey.

A rough spray with Halfords grey primer.

And an evening's work for two of us - basically a lot of picking out of individual bricks in 4Ground's Dark Stone, Pale Stone and Slate Grey. I'll knock the brightness and grey back with some Vallejo Sepia Shade when it eventually arrives from Amazon, because I don't want that pure a shade of grey, because stone flags aren't that colour. 

The rest that we finished, plus the brush stash for scenics (Hobbycraft, a tenner).

The rest of the work I did before Andrew arrived - just spray cans (AP Fur Brown for the bricks, AP Chaotic Red for the roof tiles) and a bit of masking on the cream (AP Skeleton Bone) stonework on the tower. Further work to come.

Venice and Chef-du-Pont

An odd combination, but they do have in common the fact that they're wetter than supposedly dry land should be.

Had half an hour spare after work to do a bit of prep for tomorrow, when hopefully we're having a painting session on the TT Combat Venetian Quarter set I picked up at Salute and Rob from the club very kindly assembled while I was in the US.

Gallery with captions below.

A stack of Venetian streets of various sizes and angles.

A fair-sized chunk of Venice.

Two spare 4'x2' MDF boards - a rough spray of Plastikote sea blue and an overspray of a muddy green (a spare can of Flames of War Sherman Drab), May well be used for Chef-du-Pont too. At some point they'll get several layers of tough gloss varnish.

First cut at a street section. AP Fur Brown spray, followed by a misting of AP Matt Black from a distance. Then I masked off the brickwork, and undercoated the rest with Halfords grey spray primer. Once dry, to finish the brickwork I used a light wash of Woodlands Scenics Concrete poster paint to pick out the mortar and accentuate the odd brick a bit, and then the bottom couple of courses were liberally washed with AP Military Shade. On top I picked out a few paving slabs with 4Ground Pale and Dark Stone.

 Final touch, a light wash with Vallejo Sepia (I'm almost out and I missed the Amazon next day delivery time by 10 mins! Grrr!) just to knock back the starkness of the greys.