Progress on my 28mm Dark Ages Village Project - Part 2 PAINTED BUILDINGS

So this is an update on my ongoing dark ages village project. Looking for a Scandinavian theme pre 1066 so lots of bare wood and thatch. Ive painted a few of the buildings from part 1 but also added in a few more recent builds. Check them put :)

Two longhouses

Figs to scale

Thatch detailing- not bad for scourer pads, chopsticks and some cheap paint!

Grainstore on stilts- stops pesky vermin getting in and the harsh winters ruining your goods!

The first two buildings I made- chopstick free but look fine alongside the other buildings.

More to come as soon as I get round to painting the rest!

Update!- paint!

Hi, been a while since my last post but been mad busy with work and both my cameras have been playing up. Booo.

Buttttttt I have had time to finish some of the buildings I've been working on, and start a few more besides. Yayyyy!

So check out a few updates that I'm making. I've split them up for easier viewing :)

All painted models coming up are painted using these paints

Check out the buildings to see how they worked out. I thought they may be a bit cheap and nasty but in the end were really effective. And  fraction of the price of a lot of other brands!

I also use this spray to undercoat all of my buildings and scenery projects. Its from Poundland and funnily enough costs a pound! It can destroy detail if youre not careful and go in too close with a heavy finger, but with a few light coats it works out fine. Its also ideal for the thatched roofs where you need deep coverage so may need to do repeated sprays.

 You may not get much for your money per can but if you compare 8 of these vs 1 GW spray you get tonnes more! 

Remember to only get matt black ;)

NEVER USE THIS SPRAY ON FIGURES- JUST SCENERY PROJECTS!

Army painter matt black for figure undercoating every time!

Viking Longhouse for 28mm Dark Ages Wargaming

After a birthday meal at Yo!sushi I have gained a tonne more chopsticks so thought I'd give another building a go.

You guessed it- I'm using chopsticks, foamboard, clippers, a craft knife, hot glue gun and some wire. And a cutting mat, always use this if your mum/ partner has a tablecloth. No matter how tacky it is.

Basing materials supplied by Famous Gaming, check them out!

The walls were made from some mis-cut bunker sides my brother made for his sets on Famous Gaming  Check it out, sells cheap modelling supplies! 

The walls were matched up, wired into place using pegs and then hot glued. Door was cut in 1 side, windows were left as they are.

Another angle.

The sides were covered as standard- chopsticks roughly cut for a rough hewn look. Added a snow shelter over the door from the tips of chopsticks and a foamboard offcut. The roof is again two mis-cut sheets, standard foamboard cut by you will work just as well.

A chimney was added using a foamboard offcut and some rectangular chopstick ends

Snow shelter added above each window

Other side

Scourer thatch was starded as per normal, see older posts for a detailed demo. Basically cut to length, split down the middle to thin them, rough them up and overlay them for a realistic look.

This continued all the way round, including the snow shelters.

Views from all angles. 

It was then glued to a base, sand was glued on (from famous gaming), undercoated black and left to dry.

All wooden parts then got coated in burnt umber

Had to give it a few coats to really sit well. A mix of burnt umber and burnt sienna was added as a final coat to give it a redder look. The roof got a heavy drybrush of country maple.

The roof then had a layer of golden brown applied.

This was then highlighted with a drybrush of tan. The side walls were also drybrushed in tan to give it depth and to give a worn look.

Side by side with another building.

Scales up perfectly!

Great build from scrap lying around my house :D

Any suggestions, comments or questions please ask, thanks for looking!

Building a Viking / Saxon Grainstore for 28mm Dark Ages Wargaming

This tutorial is how to make a Scandinavian grainstore- perfect for Vikings or Saxons!

The methods used on this build are very similar to previous builds so check them out for a more detailed explanation of certain techniques.

Basing materials supplied by Famous Gaming, check them out!

Part 1: Materials- Some foamboard, some plastic chopsticks, a craft knife, hot glue gun, ruler and pencil. A sheet of foamboard about A4 size should suffice, I used scraps but you'd have leftovers if you bought an A4 sheet from a shop.

The foamboard was cut to give a bevelled base and the 4 walls of the building

2 triangles were cut to be the triangular gable ends

This was all glued together and a floor was added- the floor on this build is 100% necessary!

I then cut a door from the odd shape left from cutting the two triangles and glued this on. Then I built a frame around the door and a ledge, using the rectangular chopstick ends. I also started to glue the upright chopsticks in place. These were cut into to give a rougher hewn appearance, see my older posts for more on this :)

This continued all the way around the building.

I then paired up 10 of the rectangular ends and glued them to the base. These provide the stilts that the building will stand on.

Tadah! I didnt glue the building on top so it is able to be moved for storage etc. Two beams were added to the roof for extra support and to look fancy. Coming along nicely.

The roof was made from strips of scouring pad cut and overlaid. Rough them up for a more authentic thatch look.

Splitting the pads will make the thatch much more realistic and also make it go much further. This isn't the building in the tutorial but around now was when my camera decided to hate life so there's a bit of a  jump.

After this point more steps were added using the rectangular ends and a chopstick beam frame was added under the building to stop it sliding when placed on the stilts.  Then it got undercoated in black spray paint 

The whole thing got painted in burnt umber brown acrylic paint- few coats for the chopsticks and light coats for the roof.

The roof then got further coats of country maple acrylic to add some highlights.

It then got a pretty thick brushing of golden brown acrylic- but not completely covering the previous 2 brown layers.

To finish it off the roof got a final highlight of tan acrylic paint, its a sandy colour that works well with the golden brown to create a thatched look.

The base was painted in a similar way- sprayed black, painted with burnt umber, dry brushed with country maple and tan.

As the pic above shows it works out nicely for scale and is a pretty unusual model- not many people seem to make grainstores for their 28mm. All in all very happy with this build :)

Any suggestions, questions or comments ask away!

Dark Age Buildings for 28mm wargaming- Part 1

Hey, so for this post I'll be showing some of the buildings I've been working on for my 28mm dark ages wargames. 

Theyre a mix of wattle & daub, log and thatch buildings made to represent scandinavian buildings from around 900AD

Unfortunately I hadn't taken any pics of the work in progress to get to the stage the models are at in the first pictures, but I'll cover them in a later post :)

Both the main shell of the buildings and the bases are made form 5mm foamboard. 

These are actually scraps left over from my brother's Warhammer 40,000 bunker set he sells at Famous Gaming (check him out!) but can be bought at most craft and modelling stores. They're cheap enough online too.

The building is a gable ended long house with vertical sides at about the same height as a figure. The door may look small, but you wouldn't want big doors in the freezing north! I added some beams to the roof for support and to give it a more scandinavian feel. The card on the foamboard was peeled off so a rough plank pattern could be ethed in around the model.

This is the equipment and materials needed for the roofing: hot glue gun, scissors, scourer pad without sponge and a building without a roof

The scourer sheets were 4 for 99p in a local discount store- a great bargain and addition to any scenery maker's workshop! These ones were thick enough to be peeled in half to allow for extra layers and wispy bits to create realistic clumps. Also helped to fill all the pesky holes.

I cut the sponge into strips just about an inch and a half x the length of the sponge, which happened to be roughly the same width of the building. Give them a it of rough treatment to ruffle the edges and give them a more natural look.

  Then add hot glue to the vertical side and the cross beams and layer on the scourer trips. Once both sides were layered and dry, I thought it looked like it needed some kind of ridge beam to contain the thatch so I added a few spare foamboard rods and chopped into them a bit to turn them into planks.

Added a few more tufts here and there to give it a wilder look, some gaps will be filled later with a pva and fluff coating.

Ready for painting and a PVA wash to keep all the fluff in place.

This is a triangular house. Judging by a few sources these seemed a popular structure in the dark ages, as people would store their possessions in the corners and then sleep up against them. Would also be a good foodstore.

I began trying to thatch it with the tufts cut form the shower scrubber used in the crop field build- What a ballache! Definately worth switching to the scourers!

I proceeded to cover the building in layers in the same way as the first building, adding extra fluff to fill gaps. 

Finally, this is the beginning of a corral or vegetable patch to go with the buildings. Its just a section of 5mm foamboard, cut with a bevel edge and some cocktail sticks chopped and hot glued in. Soon to be based and either filled with modelled veg or some pigs. On the hunt for some cheap small farmyard animals!