Field Fortications

In between working on 40k related projects I've finished up two more sections of gabions. I had done all of the construction for each of these previously and just needed to base and paint them.

I packed the sand mix from the inside this time which was much easier. 

I put a shorter gabion on the end of each one. This way I can put them together a couple of different configurations with either firing positions for shot or as a larger position for a regimental gun.  I'll need a few more to make any real trench line but this group will do for a small revetment.

Detour to the 40th Millenia

There has been a bit of a delay since my last post. I had been working to get some more gabions and a few pikeman painted when my wife suggested she'd like to paint up and play some 40k again. This was an opportunity not to be passed up. She decided that she would play with her Tyranids again and look into adding some new figures. I looked over the armies I had stored away and choose my Tau to once again see the light of day.

One hurdle facing the project is that I really don't have much terrain for 40k anymore. I have a few Imperial buildings that I kept and an old 4 x 8 board but it needs some serious refurbishment. So the first step would be making something to play on. While I really like big set boards whether modular or not I don't have the storage space for them and they take too long to build. Instead I'm going to make a flexible mat borrowing techniques from the flexible pieces I've been making recently.

Since I've never made a play mat before I decided to make a sample piece first to work out any kinks. I purchased a canvas drop cloth to form the base. For this piece I cut down a piece from a 4 x 5 cloth. I also got a 6 x 9 to use for my final mat.

There's a mix of different colored and size sand and fine gravel applied to the caulk. 

Next it got a coating of caulking. I worked this into the cloth using a drywall tool to get a fairly thin even coat. Then the sand went on for texture and was pressed into the caulk. This was left to dry overnight.

It was painted a red brown with a dark brown wash and then i picked out the larger stones with black and a grey dry brush. Everything then got dry brushed up through a brick red to tan. After that Earth tone fine turf was applied. I think the turf is a bit too green overall so I ordered some yellow grass to use with it on the actual mat.

With this sample piece done I'm ready to move onto the main event. I'm also working on some terrain and trying to figure out how I want to paint my additions to my Tau forces.

The mat is very flexible and easy to roll up for storage. 

Some of my Tau scout out the new terrain.

One of the nice attributes of the mat is its easy to make rolling terrain by simply sticking objects underneath.

Future projects: A test paint for my Tau reinforcements and some more terrain.

Imperial Shotte

My first unit is completed for my Imperialist forces. Well its really half a unit as it seems most infantry are in units of 12 in the rules.

I'm using the 1, 2, 3 basing method invented by Dalauppror. I think it's a really clever system that makes for nice looking unit. Still organized but not with the parade ground look you get from square bases.

 I wanted the whole force to match so instead of scraping together the various sized bases from what I had on hand I ordered a set of laser cut ones from Litko. I didn't get the bases until after they were mostly painted so there was a bit of a puzzle getting them to fit on the bases. I had planned out how they would fit together but didn't quite realize how tight they would be. I'm considering upping the diameter of the group bases to make it easier for them to fit but I also like the tight grouping.

The Siren Song of the Gabion

It's strange how sometimes simple things can capture your imagination. A gabion is little more than a big open-ended basket full of dirt but I've always been fascinated by the look of them. And yet I've never gotten the chance to make any due to never gaming a time period where they would be appropriate. ( I suppose I could have made some to go with the cannon in my Warhammer Empire army, but they misfired and exploded so often that they would have served more as protection for the rest of my army from cannon shrapnel than anything else.)

So when I decided to do some 30 Years War the first thing I wanted to make was some gabions. There are a lot of nice resin and even plastic models out there but I decided to make mine from scratch out of wire.

My first attempt showed it was a little harder than I first thought. I salvaged some different sizes of copper wire from an old light fixture for the uprights and used some thin florists wire for the weaving. My first method was to stick the uprights into a piece of pink foam and weave the wire around them. In order to get the wire to look right you need an uneven number of support poles. Unfortunately the pink foam didn't hold them well enough and when I resorted to superglue to reinforce the structure it ate away at the foam making the situation even worse. I still ended up with two usable gabions even though they look like they were made by some drunken sappers.

My first two done. The Saxon is only for scale but looks doubtful about this being the future of warfare.  

For the third attempt I drilled holes in some scrap wood to make a jig to hold the uprights. This worked out much better although there was some difficulty extricating it once complete.

Just starting to weave the gabion on the jig.

Next step was filling them with dirt. In this case I used some pink foam to plug up most of it and then smooshed a mix of sand, paint, and matte medium into the nooks and crannies. Next time I'll probably coat the inside with the dirt mixture first so that it presses up against the inside of the wicker work and then fill the rest with foam.

As is the norm I forgot to take pictures of the rest of the intermediate steps. This is just before getting ready to paint. 

I glued my three gabions together and I embedded them into a caulk base. After that it was finished up similar to my fields. There's room for improvement in the process but I think they weren't to difficult to make so I'm going to put together a few more sections to make a redoubt.

Merlin inspects the finished work.

Back into the Fields

Getting back into the swing of things I've decided to embark on a new miniatures project. I've been following along over the past year with the development of the The Pikeman's Lament at Dalauppror's blog. He has been working on a Thirty Years War version of Lion Rampant and if you have interest in the period or simply want to look at a lot of excellent miniatures across all periods you should check out his blog. Pikeman's Lament is scheduled for release in January so that gives me most of the year to get my stuff together.

While waiting for the first unit of figures to arrive I decided to make some plowed fields. These are basically the same as the one I made some time ago with a couple changes that I borrowed from a tutorial for flexible terrain on Dagger and Brush's blog.

I didn't have any plastic wrap so I used waxpaper instead. This turned out to be a mistake as its now stuck to the bottom of the piece. 

The first was using drywall joint tape as the base for the caulk. It makes it both stronger, thinner and more flexible than the felt I've used as a base before. I also glued a magnet onto one corner so I can attach individual pieces to it on the table. I'm thinking maybe a tree, wagon or other farming equipment. 

Next I spread the caulk over it. I've always had good luck with a paintable brown siliconized acrylic caulk so even though its a bit pricy that's what I used here. I used a chopstick to make some basic lines and the rest of the shaping was done with my fingers.

Next I sprinkled sand across it. The sand both adds texture and makes it less sticky when shaping.

The magnet is under the bits of grass in the upper right corner.

After that its the usual painting and flocking to finish it off. Since I don't have any miniatures painted up yet Launcelot and Merlin and are standing in for them.

I also got in the next stages for the project.

Return to the Blog

Well its been 6 months since I last posted on the blog. There isn't one cataclysmic cause but instead the usual slow creep of many small things caused me to move my focus away from hobby related pursuits. But the biggest is probably the butterfly effect. I'm not referring to Chaos theory but instead the tendency to flitter from one interest to another.

Rofous Hummingbird

The stem he is sitting on is sculpted, the slice of maple that forms the base is from a fallen tree in my backyard

I think we can all relate to butterfly effect in our hobby. Few of us have the single minded focus and willpower to work thru and complete projects before moving onto another. I tend to move around between various genre and individual projects leaving partially completed models behind in my wake. Sometimes I come back to finish them up sometimes they languish for years gathering dust.

Blue Jay bust

In this case I've been working on sculpting projects just not the usual  miniature ones. My wife and I have a side business selling bird sculptures. She does needle felting and I mostly work in polymer clay. For the past months this is where most of my creative energy has been going.

Evening Grosbeak

I know that most people following a miniatures blog probably don't share my particular interest in bird sculpture so I've only posted a couple of projects here and there in the past. But I also decided to put up a few pictures of my recent favorites.

Boreal Owl

So that's what I've been up to and in the next post it's going to be what I'm working on now.

African Penguins

Lower Fickleham In the Sun

Finally managed to squeeze in taking some pictures of the boards with the village and other terrain laid out on them. It ended up a lot sparser than I thought. I'm going to need more hedges and trees (can never have too many hedges or trees in the collection really) and also some more fields to fill it out.  

I just made a couple of additions to the boards since I last "finished" them. I wasn't real happy with the way the roads blended into the rest of the boards so I added some sand and paste as dirt in the gutters and along the edges. I also used some used and dried green tea leaves as leaves in spots of the gutters and added some patchy static grass on the edges.The cliff board also got some sandy texture and static grass around the rock faces.

Closer look at the improved roads.

I considered adding more grass but I think I want to keep the boards relatively simple and then make several flexible caulk pieces to go over them. These will be fields, rocky terrain, woods and such. I'm hoping it will give me more options overall. I'm still not real happy with the poor fit of the boards together and the unsightly join line. Hopefully the use of overlay pieces will disguise these as well. If I ever make more board sections I'll have to be more careful to get more exact edges but for now I at least have something to play a game on.