A Brick Building from the Ground Up - Part 2

Just thought I would show that I am making progress on this little project. Since I managed to lose the instruction booklet from ITLA I have been going slow trying to figure out how some of this should be going together.

First real mistake was cutting away the tabs on the door frame on the back of the building. That really should stay in place and I should have just cut the brick/stone center piece. I managed to get the frame back into place but I damaged it and it took a little TLC to get it back into place and looking whole again.

At this point I think all I have managed to do is glue in a door and get some of the trim painted up. I'm trying to do everything I can while the walls are flat. I have cut out some windows and figured out that the window sills should be removed so the window itself can be glued flat against the back of the wall and then glue the sill back into place so it protrudes out from the wall the width of the window part.

In progress, a chaotic mess

I think this really shows the variation in the brick colors with the mortar in place. I have handled these a lot and the ink is really hold up well.

Pick out the window sills in more of sandy stone color. I used Vallejo "Highlight US Tanker" #322 in the Panzer Aces line.

Experimenting with how the corner brick strips should fit.

Trying to figure out how the window treatments are supposed to work.

And an actual success. One wall done.

Painting HO Scale Miniatures - Step 6 - Almost There

Well, I was hoping to be done with these, but they aren't quite ready yet. The few extra details have been painted up; hats, hair, gloves and what not. In addition to that I have added some lining but I'm not completely finished with that step, however, its been a while and I wanted to show the progress.

My issue with them now, as we reach these final steps, is the skin has ended up being to dark on most of them. So my next step will be to finish up the lining, pick out any details I missed and then go back with the bronze skin mid tone (or perhaps something else) and lighten up the skin.

Overall I'm fairly please with how these came out. I think the are significantly better than what you typically see on most model railroads. Overall I figure I have spent about 2 hours of painting on these 30 miniatures. Its hard to calculate the prep time but place that at an hour which means I'm spending roughly about 6 minutes per miniature. I got there by painting in mass (something wargamers are quite familiar with). Pick the number of miniatures you are comfortable with and prep and paint them all at once. I do admit that I basically skipped the two guys in suits though. You can a lot of time by keeping your color palette small and moving from one figure to the next with that color. You lose time by constantly changing colors as you move from one figure to the next.

I'm going to purchase some better sculpted HO folks and see what I can do with something that is well sculpted and produced using these same basic techniques. And in regards to these Preiser miniatures apparently steering wheels are huge on German vehicles? All the ones that have arms set like they are holding a steering wheel look like they are driving an 18 wheeler.

Group 1 Black Primer

Group 2 White Primer

Group 3 Grey Primer

Group 4 Zenithal

Group 1 Black Primer

Group 2 White Primer

Group 3 Grey Primer

Group 4 Zenithal

Acquisitions - Narrow Gauge Pictorial (4 Volumes)

To be cleared at the start my favorite narrow gauge railroad is the Colorado & Northwestern out of Boulder to Ward and Eldora. When I have the space and finally manage to acquire some On30 2-8-0s that will be the road I model.

Its still nice to have books on the other narrow gauge railroads in Colorado not the least of which is the D&RG. Back in the '80s and '90s Robert Grandt published a 10 volume series on the D&RG narrow gauge and I recently spotted an auction for 4 of these books; Vols II - V and I managed to get them for a great price, about $12 book. So a few more books for the railroad collection have arrived!

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Kickstarter Loot - Gamelyn Games - Tiny Epic Vikings Deluxe

My copy of Tiny Epic Vikings arrived over the weekend. I have been looking forward to getting this one and I think it might even have hit a little early. Since this is the "Deluxe" version from the kickstarter it also included the first expansion "Ragnarok". Since its one of my favorite subjects I pretty much went all in with this one. I picked up the player mats and the main game mat which are just beautiful. The only other one I did this with was the Tiny Epic Western and I think I just bought the mat for that. 

Here are some pics, a feast for your eyes:

They hit all the goals I think, the first which is a box upgrade to some pretty thick cardstock.

There is a lot packed into this tiny box

Everything laid out, board is a nice thick cardstock, pieces were upgraded to wood. Gamelyn does a superb job with their game components.

The extras that I don't normally purchase; Game mat and Player mats

And the expansion, maybe not quite as jam packed as the main box, but pretty close!

Everything laid out. I know I didn't open anything that was shrinkwrapped so you will just have to use your imagination.