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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Bad spot for a flat tire!

Hungarian camp is finished and the end of this project is in sight!  I had two early ideas for this camp, neither of which came to fruition. I wanted to do something that fit thematically with a medieval Hungarian army. My first idea was to build an elevated camp that looked like it was situated on a mountain cliff.  I worked over a couple of  pieces of Styrofoam but I could not get it to look proper so I discarded the mountain cliff idea.

For my second idea, I found a wagon and hand gunners in my pile of unpainted figures.  Corvinus' Black Army employed protected battlewagons so decided to use Green Stuff to turn an ordinary wagon into a protected battle wagon. This required me to build a very thin wooden wall onto one side of the wagon from which the handgunners would have protection while loading and firing. Try as I might, my skills with Green Stuff modelling putty are not sufficient to convert a wagon into a Hussite-like fortress on wheels.

In the process of this failed conversion, I snapped a wheel off of the wagon.  My first inclination was to curse my ineptitude.  My second was to use the busted wagon as the centerpiece of  my camp.  BINGO!!!!


I'm not much of an ideas guy and I mostly follow in the footsteps of painters and hobbyists more talented than I.  This time though, I managed to come up with a good theme for the camp AND I tried something new in painting the tent. I blocked in the base colors. Then I put in ocher wash over the top of it. Then I put the highlights on in thick rivulets so that when they dried, they formed a ridge/shadow to simulate the shadowing on a fabric tent.  Last step, I brought in Devlon Mud wash in with a very thin brush to create a line between the two colors.   I think it works!  It looks good from 3 feet away but of course, photos aren't shot from 3 feet away.

I'm just happy that I've been able to incorporate an Impetus-like diorama into Field of Glory!  Here's a shot that incorporates a dime to show the 15mm scale for nonmodellers.  The medieval tent is by Baueda and it is spectacular.  I'll be using Baueda for all of my tents  in the future!  Figures and wagon are by Essex and quite excellent themselves.  


The rarely seen "dime" pavis. 
Last is the work in progress pic. It is true that posting a "work in progress" pic at the end of a post is out of order but blogging requires you to start with your best picture first to (hopefully) draw readers in.

It occurred to on me that I need some fortifications to my Ottoman Turks army so I got about building them.  These were made with Durhams Water Putty thickly mixed and slapped on Litko bases. Woodland Scenic Fine Ballast over the top with glue/water mix. Fortifications will give my Janissary foot an assist when fighting on wide open Knight-centric battlefields. And as a bonus, having the Janissary fight from behind fortifications is also historically correct!
When Accident became Providence!
No, you can't eat them

4 comments:

  1. !!! Lovely!!! That´s a great looking camp. The bueda tents are really nice (pity they don´t make these in 1/72nd) and you paintjob is top.
    Cheers
    paul
    PS..the camels being used a cover,,I know it´s not totally right but it looked good :-D
    Happy X-Mas

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  2. Very nice camp. I like the idea of putting a story on the table. Well done.

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  3. Thanks guys! And Merry Christmas!!!

    Paul, could you shoot me an email at your convenience? My email is in my profile and I'd love to talk to you. I really appreciate it!

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  4. Ok, I´ll do that.
    Cheers
    paul
    PS..I had your blog on my blog roll but I wasn´t following "directly"...now rectified:-D

    ReplyDelete