Building Calamity 25 - The "Hardware" Store - Wallpaper on the First Floor

I did a little more experimenting with the ink washes and then went back and looked at my original posts about weathering buildings for Calamity and I basically reinvented the wheel. So the post using the Vallejo Washes its very similar to what I was doing a couple of years ago which I can attribute my basic technique to a model railroad site. The real key to making it work is that you need to prime in white so the black ink goes gray as you spread it with the brush. The splattering of the ink on to the surface is what makes it different from my original weathering style and really gives it that nice random weathered look. I think this will be my go to technique for the initial weathered wood layer. Its relatively fast so once you get going it doesn't take long to finish it. It is messy though so be prepared! I use two brushes for the technique now, the first one I load up with ink and use that as my splatter brush, then a I take another brush to create the streaks. Get out your terrain brushes for this technique.

I went in and finished the small add on shack at the back. I still need to assemble it but it wasn't getting "paint" so I could apply washes on both sides. You can really make a difference in the color of the wood on the ink colors you choose. I really like the oxide yellow for a real soft new wood look. It has a very "piney" feel to it.

This is the interior side of the add on.

This is the exterior side of the add on. I did go back in and apply some more weathering to the window frame. The window frame will get my chipped paint technique.

After doing a that bit of weathering I went back and added the wallpaper to the interior walls of the first floor. The only piece that I have left to finish is the front wall which is rather complicated with the doors and windows. Its going to take a bit of cutting and fitting to finish that piece off. After that I'm considering the interior to be finished and I think I can start assembly the building. I want to do that before painting since I need to add some trim pieces to the corners after its all glued together.

Each wall with a door takes three pieces. I don't worry about seams showing as that would be pretty normal.

Three walls at once. I love my steel weights!

This one is almost done, the last two pieces are being glued into place.

The wall with no windows, this one was easy!

Checking out how things look.

A view that we won't see again once the building is glue together. Although this does remind me that I still need to make some doors!

A bit of an overhead look. This will be the most common view, I think its looking pretty good!

Building Calamity 24 - The "Hardware" Store - More Interior Work

I have had a lot more time to work on the hardware store than I anticipated so I feel like I'm making progress. I'll feel a lot better when I can go in and glue things together! I started working on the interior of the first floor last night mostly because I was excited about trying out a new technique for painting wood. As originally posted it used washes and since it features Vallejo products it may have come from the Vallejo site. I'm somewhat embarrassed that I forgot to note the blog I pulled it from and the actual author. If someone knows please let me know in the comments section so I can give proper credit.

There is going to be a fair amount of exposed or unpainted wood on this model so I thought I would give this technique a try utilizing what I had on hand which are my Liquitex Acrylic inks. I selected Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Oxide and Carbon Black as my colors. I have used the umber and sienna for raw wood before so I was comfortable with these choices. The yellow looked like a close match to the Vallejo yellow wash in the picture but the carbon black ink is really, really black so I was a little hesitant with that.

An important thing to remember with the inks is you must use them on a primed surface. Straight plastic or, in my case, foamed PVC is definitely a hydrophobic and tends to make inks bead up and not adhere properly. So keep that in mind if you give this a try. I would think you would need a primed surface if you used the Vallejo washes as well.

On to the pictures

I decided to start with the floor, its big and doesn't have any complicated corners to deal with.

First I splattered on burnt umber and then it spread it, with the grain, with another brush. This is messy! I forgot to put the paper down and splattered ink all over my cutting surface. No harm done for me but you would never hear the end of it if you did it on the kitchen table!

Applied the Burnt Sienna, Same deal, splattered drops of it and brushed with the grain and over lapping areas of Burnt Umber

Without adjusting the white balance you can start to see the build up of color, bringing character to the floor.

Here I have added the oxide yellow. Shifting the white balance really made this starker looking that it really is.

With the yellow and no white balance

Adding some more burnt umber

Adding the black and playing with the white balance

Not quite so stark 

The two floors finished

Using burnt sienna on the wainscotting

Painting in the dark trim, BEFORE I add the wallpaper

Sealed up with a solid coat of Vallejo Matte Varnish.

I like the wash technique but its a bit time consuming and a little messy because you splatter the paint on. I am also a bit worried about miniatures scratching the floor during play. I may go with printed cardstock floors instead and just glue them down to a base. Still thinking about that, although I have already found a number of really nice looking flooring styles that I can just print out from a color printer of some kind.

With the way the ink is splattered on and then brushed with the grain I think this technique will work to get the silvered old wood look on the exterior as well. On the other hand my old weathering technique of using the Scribbles black dye is still quite valid and now that I think about it there really isn't a lot of difference between the two techniques.

Building Calamity 23 - The "Hardware" Store - Wallpaper

Yet another grand experiment for the Calamity buildings is the addition of wallpaper, specifically patterned wallpaper. I found a couple of dollhouse sites that had free wallpaper downloads and acquired a number of interesting patterns. The most common dollhouse scale is 1/12 which makes the patterns way to large to be of use so I shrunk them down to something that looked more appropriate for the citizens of Calamity. I think the pattern I used for the upstairs of the hardware store may still be to large but I think it gets the job done.

I decided to start with the top floor and, of course, in my eagerness to get to get to it I forgot that I should have painted all of the interior trim FIRST before adding the wallpaper. Oh well, there is still the first floor to apply that lesson to. Wallpaper is very common in the old west, because it was cheap, relatively easy to apply and it provided some insulation in the form of sealing up those gaps between the planks used for the walls. 

I'm happy to report that the glue I used works much better on the PVC after it has been primed. It didn't work as nicely on my roofs as I applied the glue on the first row house on the bare PVC and it peeled up on me in several places. Piecing the wallpaper together on the walls was a bit of challenge and a little time consuming. I'm thinking that maybe it would be better to apply the wallpaper first before I even cut stuff out. I'll have to think about that one a bit.

So on to the pictures!

Primed white with Badger Stynylrez primer

This is an easy piece. glue the whole thing on without cutting.

Trim it up and its ready for...oops I really should have painted that trim first.

The side with two windows was a real bear to do. In fact I left the small strip of space at the bottom of the windows bare. It just wasn't worth the effort.

The interior wall

Everything in place and held together with my favorite metal blocks. A little paint work on the inside and I can assemble the top floor.

New Painting Book - Color Formulas and Techniques for the Model Horse Artist

I have been searching for this book off and on for about five years now. I emailed the company to see if there was any chance it would be reprinted and the reply was they had such grand plans for the third edition. So it sounds like its unlikely to be reprinted. However they were nice enough to send a couple of links to a model horse forum that used copies can be found on from time to time. One link was to a copy which was missing the formula cards but I already had a set of those so this was a good buy for me at a reasonable price; $65.

This is a three ring binder style book with pages that measure 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" which is definitely an odd size. Its also geared towards the larger scale horses like those by Breyer (and I thought our hobby was niche) so really its most appropriate for 54mm and larger horses but there are some things that can be applied to 28mm horses at least those meant primarily for display or competition, gaming horses aren't likely to need this kind of treatment except for maybe a mounted commander or mounted command stand.

But I find the subject fascinating and I'm probably going to learn a lot more about painting horses than I'm ever really going to need.

Nice cover and Carol Williams is apparently one of the top model horse artists in the hobby. This is the 2nd Edition, 3rd Printing from '97. From what I understand its the last printed edition and there is not an ebook or an intent to publish it as an ebook,. This makes not sense to me as the format is just about perfect and you could go full color for very little effort. Copies with that still have the formula cards apparently have sold for well over $100. I would say that the demand is still there.

It has a weird page numbering system with the numbers starting over for each chapter. All I can really tell you at this point is that there is an 1 1/4 worth of pages there. I probably don't need the first 9 chapters of the book as it includes pretty everything a model horse artists needs to know in depth including types of paints and how they interact with each other. Since I'm already a fairly experienced painter I figured I could skip those sections and skip right to the "how to" chapters.

Kickstarter Watch 1 - Tiny Epic Western Boardgame

I have really reduced the number of Kickstarters that I have gotten involved with but this is one that I'll be jumping on; Tiny Epic Western. I have their last Kickstarter game; Tiny Epic Galaxies and while I haven't had a chance to play it yet it is well designed with high quality pieces and parts and was delivered on time! I have high hopes for this one as well and apparently so does everyone else. It kicked off today and has already crossed the $117,000 pledge mark and wiped out all their initial stretch goals. They were only looking for $15,000! This might create a delay in production but I'm okay with that as it fits into the western genre that I love. For $26 you are in for the deluxe version with all the add-ons and digital content. What are you waiting for? Tiny Epic Western

I'm not sure about fitting in your pocket but Tiny Epic Galaxies easily fits in my full backpack.

At the beginning

In play

This is currently what you would be getting in the deluxe edition of the game.. Shipping in the US is only $2, Shipping everywhere else was looking pretty reasonable.