Kategorie: Scenery

World War 1 picture background

Way back our club Spieltrieb Frankfurt presented a WW1 game on the german Wargamingshow Tactica. I painted some additional models since we plan to play „Through the mud and the blood“ by too fat Lardies. Once I painted the new models I was tired about my green background which was not appropriate for the historical background of the late war models.

Therefore I created four elements for picturing my models: A background print, which is a colored version of an historical image, a hill segment with barbed wire, a trench section with a fire step and a wall section with sandbags on top.

The first photo shooting was quite good. The elements profed to be quite variable, it is possible to use them in different angles and combinations.

The trench raiders rally before the assault.

The Stormtroopers march to their assault perimeter.

The Stormtroopers are assaulting.

The aftermarth, medics and wounded.

19. Oktober 2013
Hartmut von Kronberg

This unit was painted for our Club´s presentation during Tactica 2013. It depicts the german knight Hartmut von Kronberg who earned money with robbery in the Area of Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt. The basing is again for Impetus, Miniatures are designed by Perry Miniatures.

The lances are flexible and were hand made by me. All banners were printed out and painted over.

The tent was designed by me, I used various materials to design the master. This is actually a copy made with dental plaster. I have made a few more which showed the siege area on the gaming table.

7. April 2013
Container and Boxes for SciFi

During Tactica 2013 (see my Tactica image gallery on our club page here) I bought some very nice boxes and a container from Pardulon Models. For years I searched a reason for buying some of this great stuff but I lacked a gaming system which fitted. Pardulon provides models for Fantasy in WH style, for post apocalyptic games, for modern settings and for SciFi settings. None of them are played right now. However I started to play the RPG Shadowrun and decided to paint some obstacles for our tactical paper board, since we often play on maps. The plan is to have one small peace of scenery available for every gaming session, which rarely occur. For sure having some scenerey for Infinity is also good, since our friends from Tabletop Club Rhein Main e.V. want to show us the game.

The model itself was a fun to paint. I airbrushed the model on a black priming with white spraying from high noon sun position. Adding red with the airbrush left much of that structure. A tipp which was told me by Glorfunzel. I took me almost 20 years to get to know the basics of airbrushing…

I used the sponge technic to add damages and added rust pigments. A last finish with smoke from vallejo and the black ink from GW added oily spots and dirt.

The logo shows the fictional Shadowrun Corporation SAEDERKRUPP which operates in the story in the area which used to be germany. Since we play in that area, this was the first choice.

28. März 2013
Norman conquering infantry for SAGA

I rebased these norman infantry with kite shields in order to build the backbone of my SAGA warband. Unfortunately the battleboard focusses on bowmen and cavalry, what a pity that I have so much spearmen. But on the other hand I have beautiful miniatures to take pictures with.

During finalizing these miniatures the worst case of all painters took place: I took by accident the paint can instead of the varnish can. After that mistake I reduced the brown spray with Acetone and q-tips. It worked quite good, surely because I had varnished the models years before. But try if you managed to make that mistake, too.

The fortified farm house are from Hudson & Allen, I purchased them via EBOB miniatures. They were designed for scotish highlands but I think they also fit perfect for 1066. I painted the model in order to have a backdrop for the pictures and to have a dark medieval feeling on the battlefield.

I added pale static grass to the roofs. This came out very good, if you ask me. I tried cocos fabric with another roof, but these are far to thick although the color looks excellent.

All spears are made from Flexi Pikes.

The crossbowmen were painted this year in order to play SAGA. I did them in a hurry, but they came out not too bad.

16. August 2012
Knights of Kronberg – The Donkey Charge

Our Club´s annual presentation for this year´s Tactica Hamburg was the Feud of Kronberg, a medieval local conflict between Frankfurt and nearby living Knights of Kronberg. During the Battle of Eschborn 1389 the Kronberg Knights led a charge in against the troops of Frankfurt. There is a myth around this battle. It was told that one of the knights lost his destrier and desparetly searched for a mount in the area. Unfortunately he was only able to find a donkey on which he rode into tha battle.

His charge was so devastating that the Frankfurters were completly demoralised and fled the ground. One stirps of the family has donkey ears in their family crest.

In order to have this myth appearing in the presentation I asked Ebob if he could do me a donkey or a mule because he really sculpts excellent mounts. He did this outstanding mule, thank you so much for this, and I mounted a knight on it. It is very funny that people did not notice it without help. A wrong mount in a group seems to be not very obvious. However it was great fun to paint.

The house and fence is from perry miniatures.

I was asked to post detailed pictures showing the farmer woman and her children and the knights in detail. Here you are.

5. August 2012
Skaven

In our wargaming club Spieltrieb Frankfurt we play occasionally Song of Blades and Heroes. Since we do this with Warhammer Fantasy miniatures, I decided to get some for myself and painted them. I have chosen the Skaven since I really like the style of the miniatures. The colors were inspired by the source book for skaven with plenty of color schemes. Although I usually rant about the book products by GW, this one is really a good idea with tons of artwork.

I painted the fur by hand with single strokes in several colors which came out really good as you might see on the arm of the rat in the front on the left side. The mage was painted by my club collegue Kerstin, as a very good deal unpainted miniatures for one painted miniature. Thanks a lot for this beautiful addition to my collection.

With the few miniatures I decided to build some foto set scenery elements in order to compose more exiting pictures. Learning from Frank Becker I decided to do similar setups but my challenge is, not to use Photoshop for generating great composits. I did three stripes of grass, a couple of rocks (made from excellent Ceramine Rocks by Rusus) and a background. The colour concept of dark dusty volcanic earth with yellow grass was followed both in basing and scenery elements.

I hope you like the composition, taking pictures this way and trying to tell a story in the picture is really interesting. I really need to borrow some oponent miniatures from some mates in order to have battle scenes, too.

Colours

Since I was asked how I painted the Skin of the rats, I just post here a scan of my colour note book.

1. August 2012
Pine, birch and spruce trees

During the german wargaming convention Tactica 2011 in Hamburg we will show a Flames of war gaming table depicting an Eastern Front scenario. We want to show the area at the Don bow next to Stalingrad. Since the fight took place at the country side we focus on realistic looking trees. These here are the prototypes for our woods. The first tests using Flexibark by Green Scene and MiniNatur tree foliage made us quite happy.

These trees were made by El Comandante and me and the creation was far quicker than we expected. Using flower wire as a basis with flexibark on top proofed to be very effective. The MiniNatur material is quite expensive but bring outstanding results if you ask me. Especially the pine foliage (called Kiefer in German) is a very effective material and you get a lot of trees out of one box. The Material for the spruce is not that effective, one box was enough for three trees.

The painjob was done by priming with brown ArmyPainter Primer, after that I used a mixture consisting of Vallejo Brown Wash and Brown and Black ink. After drying I drybrushed the wood with a lighter brown. That´s it.

I used foliage in fall colors and green and brown pine foliage which was simply applied with white glue.

29. September 2010
Fabric based gaming table building by War Artisan

War Artisan is the designer of several great canvas based gaming tables. Decebalus from the Sweetwater-Forums gave me an excellent reading tipp on War Artisan´s technic. The idea and the result is really stunning. Therefore I urgently recommend to have a look on War Artisans various webpages and picture galleries. Personally I consider to give that technic a try with on gaming board test.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/war_artisan/sets/72157624371716442/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/war_artisan/2752049374/in/set-72157606657233854/
http://www.warartisan.com/gallery2

A friend of him did post an how-to gallery here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36331979@N00/sets/72157610259987470/detail/

12. August 2010
Barrows

For our yearly German Lord of the Rings gaming Event on the Kauzenburg I decided this year to show up with a scenario from the Fellowship Hobby book – Fog on the barrow heights. Having painted all miniatures of the beautiful barrow height box, I decided to paint a barrow, which I bought via EBOB´s webshop. The centerpiece, which was excellent designed should be accompanied by more barrows.

I decided to build some by myself. The building was quite easy, since I used some boards, a lot of modelling clay and real stone. I tried some special effect coming from the model train universe: I did hide a smoke generator in the last barrow. The effect came out quite nice, but the oil smells and the model is covered with oil. So it is noth worth the effort I think. Good idea, but not very practical.

For applying the grass I used a Noch Grass Master, static grass comes out excellent with that kind of tools. The painting was nothing special.

The design of the wood pieces proofed to be very good for LotR games, since the hills inside the wood make more of the trees and they block line of sight. For sure this will be the way to model 28mm woods in the future.

7. Juni 2010