I sat down in front of my newly cleaned up work bench and decided to do something about the stacks of MDF terrain that is sitting on my desk for my upcoming 2nd Kharkov Campaign. The intent is to have all of the terrain and figures needed done by the time I finish the scenarios.
Anyway, I started work on one of the new Wild Lands Store miniatures. I took one of the one story more urbanish buildings to start with . I also grabbed a log building from another manufacturer, Things From the Basement and went with that as well.
One thing I have been doing is watching the wonderful posts that TooFatLardies has done on their blogs about terrain making. I agree with all of his concerns about MDF buildings. I wanted to add details to it to provide a more 3 dimensional look to the building. Because of the details on the model, I struggled to cut out anything that would match up with it and look decent. I probably needed a better cutting tool and I would have been fine. But instead, I just started to paint and see what happened.
The first item was to clean up the Wild Lands building.
After cleaning the dust off of the parts, I glued it together and wrapped it in a rubber band to stay together.
And then I fiddled with the roof and glued it together.
One thing I don't like about MDF buildings is the seam on the roof. It is always visible. It makes the building look like it will leak in a rain. and I think they are ugly that way. So I took a piece of paper that I had laying around and cut a strip and glued it over the top like a piece of roofing flashing(?). I am 90% sure I have the term wrong as can be.
I also tried to caulk the lugs where the roof fit to the roof support to mask them when painted. I am pretty sure I did a horrible job of that.. But while waiting for that mess to try, I Brought out one of the Things Under the Basement 15mm buildings and tried to help it along. It was way to small for me to fool with paper to try to fix the roof. Instead, like any general contractor, if there is a gap, caulk it. I caulked the roof line and around the chimney. The verdict is still out if this will work the way I want it to.
Next, I primed both of these black with gesso. Why my auto-correct wants to go with gestapo, I have no idea. I am sometimes impatient. I did the roof of the larger building first. I wanted to go with a tin roof. I mixed up some gray paint and slapped it on. it looks OK now but when I add some streaks of rust to stain it, it should look better.
I really wanted to get on with painting the building and finish something before my sinus infection took me out for the rest of the day. But the dang paint was not dry yet. Yet, there on the corner of my painting table was this big package from TT Combat. A large 15mm church! Now the church is designed to be more of a western cross shaped church. It is generic enough and with few details that it could be used in Normandy or Spain or possibly in the US. But, it lacks a bunch of details which is the cool part. I can modify it to be something else. And that is what I want to do.
In the campaign Action at Ustilug and in the First Kharkov Campaign, I have a large church present on the table. However, in 15mm, all of the east front churches are more like small chapels. They take up the same table space as a peasant hovel. How were they supposed to handle even a village worth of people? You could only fit 10 in there if it was one guy with multiple personalities. This building is significant and would make an excellent base for a structure like the Church of the Dormition in Kharkov.
The building will be loosely based on the above. I will add a stepple to it with an onion dome on top. Here is what I am working with.
In the second picture you can see the onion dome that I am looking to use. It came from a Paper Terrain kit that I purchased and never built. This is a longer term project that will see me redo the roof considerably. The pieces dry fit well. The kit had sat in a cupboard for so long that a corner of the base was cracked. But not so much that it messed up the kit.
Then I tried to paint to paint the building, I rushed it and the paint hadn't dried completely. But I have a mostly acceptable first coat.
By the time I got this far, I was worn out and needed to rest. I might try to paint some more this week but that is doubtful. Anyway, they are proving to be nicely made buildings.
Note: I changed the pictures to instead of sharing from my google Drive to physically uploaded pictures. Hopefully this helps.
