My Blog
Masonry Paint
I think it looks much better with about half the stones painted over with three different heavily 'diluted' stone-coloured paints. I mixed the paint about one part paint to three-five parts acrylic matt medium. In effect that creates a very 'cheap and nasty' acrylic paint with very little pigment density, so it's quite translucent, which means that the dry-brushed detail shows through. …
Wall Texturing - A Test
Here's my first go at a textured section of (scrap) wall for my 'Dura Europos' walls, which I've also painted. The 'stonework' was modelled by 'peeling off' the card from a patch of the foamcore and replacing it with some embossed PlastiKard. The 'render' was a thick painted layer of B&Q's own brand textured masonry paint, painted on, and then with water 'floated' over the top to even out the worst of brush-marks.
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Warlord Romans
I have, finally, got around to painting the Macro and Cato models that Warlord Games made some time ago. Nice looking models, from most angles - the Macro model has a slightly odd left arm - which only shows from certain angles, because it's mostly hidden by his body and shield. I've got another pair of these, with the diorama base, which I shall make sometime.
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The Walls of Dura Europos
Here are the walls, so far. I've built the 'skeletons' of them all now. Basically, there are enough straight pieces that, with the tower and gate, it's 5' (1.5 m) long, or, using the corner piece, it can cover a chunk of table about 4'6" x 18" (1.4 x 0.45 m). I'll need some buildings to go 'inside' the city, once I've done texturing and detailing the walls.
Gatehouse
Here's the gatehouse, all stuck together. Quite imposing, despite being a bit smaller in all dimensions than the original. Now I've just got to make a couple more short sections of walling, and then it'll be on to working out how to texture the beasts.
So Far, So Good...
I'm quite pleased with the way it's going so far - the parts all seem to fit well enough, though doubtless any fit issues will only really show up in the latter stages - the fronts or the sides will probably be last.
Tower
Here is the next section of the walls of Dura Europos - a tower. Not much to say really, other than that it's based on sketches in Simon James' book. This afternoon I have also cut out all the parts for the gateway. The next job is to work out the best way to glue and pin it together. It's a complicated beast, with lots of inter-connected parts, all of which have to line up with each other.
…New Battlements
Having found some new information - first of all remembering that Simon James' book "The Excavations at Dura-Europos 1928 to 1937 - Final Report: v. 7: The Arms and Armour and Other Military Equipment" has some information on the siege, and on the defences, and also having come across some useful photos on the world wide web (thanks Richard!), I decided I'd have to redo the battlements. …
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