Irongate Scenery - the bar

I’ve often thought that i’ve been a bit stuck in the past with my hobby, the vast majority of my collection is lead, although there is a growing resin and plastic contingrnt. So this is me embracing, what is very likely to be, the future - some 3D printed sculpts. They are from Irongate Scenery and are to be used for a bar interior that I have planned. 

Having painted these it is fair to say that I really dislike them. It is just simply the horrible texture of concentric lines that i’ve tried to hide with my paint job, that made painting them an incredible chore (even though these are very quick paint jobs). I came to the painting table with an open mind (and fully expected a different texture from what i’m used to) but I just could not muster up any love for them; sometimes when i’m painting I can imagine the decision making or see the style of the sculptor  as i’m working and this acts as a massive motivator to “do the sculpt justice”, because i’m not the keenest painter st the best of times.

Funnily enough, the warped top right table is greenstuffed from an instamold I made as there was a missing tabletop, and the familiarity of painting on that surface was much more enduring, even if there was a horrible warp to it! So maybe my bias is about familiarity or maybe I prefer painting things that have been made by hand. Whatever the reason, i’m staying away from 3D printed stuff and not grasping the future right now.

Dungeon scenery part 3.

After re-vamping some old heroquest furniture and buying some lovely Grendel Scotia stuff, I decided to make some of my own dungeon scenery. Now this thought happened many months ago and I began experimenting with the possibilities of using some scraps of extruded polystyrene in conjunction with some coffee stirrers for a cheap, scratchbuilt alternative. The gaps in my collection (and what I need for gaming purposes) showed that bookcases and instruments of torture were required! So with these materials and my box of bits I went about making bookcases and a torturers rack.

That was quite a few months ago and the little project stalled at the made stage and other ideas and projects leapfrogged their way to the front of the queue. So, with me recently deciding upon a New Years resolution of "finishing jobs before others are started"  (and this includes DIY and work projects), I decided to start this process at the end of December, so these three pieces were completed last night at the paint station:

The extruded styrofoam was not great to work on such a small scale for the books, greenstuff would have been better, and the poor quality finish wasn't helped by me not properly coating the foam in dilute pva prior to priming; this created a slightly pick-marked surface. The scrolls are just scraps of thick paper rolled up and stiffened in pva. The coffee stirrers are great though and have been added to my scratchbuilding kit. Here's a Wip of the bookcases:

I forgot to do the same for the rack, but it is made from the same materials with the additions of some small plastic shields for the turning device and some plastic bits from my box to decorate. Everything was primed brown and drybrushed, washed and glazed with some greens and yellows to create a wood like affect and then some dry pigment applied to create a dusty appearance on the bookcase. Some Tamiya  clear red was mixed with uhu glue to create some stringy blood on the rack.

Right, now to paint some of my backlog of miniatures that may accompany these pieces and act as ncp's for future games...

Dungeons and Dollshouses

Continuing my foray into different manufacturers miniatures and scenery; I decided to get some sets of furniture from 4ground, which can be used as furniture for my dungeon tiles, I'm kinda building up a tavern scene in my mind... It's nice to have a few professionally made bits alongside my own scratchbuilt efforts, which are on-going and slightly laborious.


So I purchased a few sets of chairs, tables and stools and spent an evening putting them together. They are of course tiny and quite fiddly, so a pair of tweezers are essential. I found that the application of pva can make the smaller components even more fragile, especially if you use too much, as they moisture in the pva weakens the wood. But once dry they are pretty robust. Of course I had to make the tables a bit more interesting, so I added a chequerboard and card game using small bits of card and candles out of plastic tubing and some little brass whatevers which I found in my garage.


As I was putting these little kits together, it reminded me of when my eldest got her dolls house and the furniture and the correlations between her playing with her toys using her imagination and me doing the same, were not lost on me, in fact it spurred me on to buy some small dolls house rugs which could furnish the floor of my growing tavern scene.

I think I need to break up the blue tiling on this floor by adding another colour within the pattern. Note a few gold coins left on a stool (purely by accident, that fucking glitter gets everywhere)

A birds eye view to show the furniture off and to get a sense of the modularity of the vignette

And how they all look together, without any distractions, when viewed sideways

So next up I'd like to scratchbuild a bar and some large kegs to complete the little diorama, I may have to investigate dolls house furniture in more details for some ideas. I'm certainly thinking of putting a few paintings up and maybe positioning a little plant in the corner...
Of course I already have the relevant npc miniatures, ready to paint, but there's always something else jumping to the front of the queue so that my project ideas can be completed in the "correct order". You see I don't want to paint the miniatures and not have a completed bar/tavern to photograph them in.
I need to get a grip! Right lets look at some dolls houses on pinterest....

Dungeon doors

So with a-level results day done for another year (one of my department's most successful too), I've been able to come home to an empty house and have a bit of time to finish up some painting and take some documenting photos and a few show-off ones too. Over the last few posts on my dungeon project, I've been referring to a range of manufacturers models that I've used; for example Grendel Scotia for their scenery, Dark Arts Studios for their treasure chests and Milton-Bradley for their original Heroquest furniture. Today it's the turn of Mantic and their relatively new dungeon doors which I picked up recently from eBay (after some poor attempts at scratchbuilding). You can see that I've added a magnetic strip to the bottom of the doors so I can incorporate them to my modular dungeon tiles:

They are really nice simple sculpts and you can see you get two of each door design. I decided to add some detail from my bitz bix  on some of these, that may help add an extra narrative later to my games:

"..at the end of the dank corridor you see a small, aging door with a white cross painted crudely over the bare wood. If you wish to open the door turn to page 231, if you would like to blow your bone whistle, turn to page 94 or if you have spoken to the hunchback,  turn to the appropriate page  number".

I've been rereading some of the dungeon based Fighting Fantasy novels - Creature of Havoc, Deathtrap Dungeon, Trial of Champions - actually in numerical sequence from 1-300, just to pick up some nice detail from the written word as much as the illustrations to add to my dungeon oeuvre. I've written a whole list of ideas that i can add to my walls, future doors etc and I've also noted down all of the monster encounters with this vague idea of collecting, painting and gaming with some sort of combo of 3rd Ediion Warhammer, Frostgrave, Heroquest and Fihhting Fantasy stats. More on this in a seperate post. Needless to say that my copy of Out of the Pit has resurfaced to be left in different spots around the house as I pick it up and put it down.

So back to the doors. These were painted very quickly. A quick tidy up of some small mold lines. Primed grey (the actual pieces come on a brown plastic) and then black washes on the stone. When this is dry I drybrushed some lighter greys over the top with the lightest colour (almost white) applied to the corner edges of each stone. For the wood I used a combination of lots of different washes from chestnut ink for the redder doors, to sepia, Browns and greens for the other colours. I usually apply the washes after highlighting, but I decided to work the other way around, and it was actually much easier.. So after the washes on the wood were dry and then chose the appropriate wash colour, mixed in some white and painted on no more than three accessibly lighter lines that followed the grain of the wood. Done. Details that I added from my Bitzbox and that were already on the doors, like hinges etc needed a bit of time (I always curse my previous self for going over the top on adding extras when my current self has to paint the bastards) and then some wearhering washes using the same colours as on the doors were applied over the stone. Not including drying times, I reckon each door took 20minutes tops.

I will return to my scratchbuilt attempts of doors, but I need to move on to some other manufacturers stuff to add to my stuff....

Dungeon scenery part 2 (Heroquest)

Having completed the first set of resin furniture from Scotia Grendel, I felt the urge to go all old school and paint up some Heroquest scenery too. I didn't want to touch my own boxed copy (there's nostalgia attached to the original plastic, unpainted set I own) so I picked up some broken and damaged lots from ebay and set about adding some extra details before painting them up. I have to say that painting such pieces is a real chore to paint (even after using grey primer to speed up the process) and it took all my willpower to persevere and not get side-tracked onto all the more interesting projects, like more npc's for example...

Here's the outcome. You can see that I've used some Styrofoam to add height to the tomb, added extra weapons and barrels to the tables and raised up the altar: 

The alchemists table came to me in good condition, if a bit sparse, so I added a scroll to the desk. The only fun bit is painting a few additional details, like the ink in the pot on the quill.

The tomb was primed grey so it only needed some drybrushed highlights and a load of weathering washes. I was tempted to add some decals to the shields but common sense and need to move on prevailed.

Very quick and easy paint job here, unfortunately the top of the halberd is missing and I forgot to add a new weapon in my haste to progress. Anyone for a metal pole as your weapon of choice/

I raided my bitzbox here and added a load of weapons and other artifacts that I can imagine are for sale from an appropriate merchant. I have now bought the merchant model....

I think this one will be added to the tavern pieces I painted last time around. Again I've got the appropriate npc's lined up (from Otherworld) to paint soon...



And the altar. It's a bit too tall now so the mage/sorcerer that I'll paint up for this will be stood on a step/plinth. I see this as a sacrificial altar (hence the blood) and I was very tempted to freehand an image from the Heroquest rulebook onto the blank page ion the right. Again, common sense prevailed (although it is the small, unique details that can set pieces apart..) I also have some slave girls which I'll paint up to accompany this piece.

Next up I'll paint some of the npc's I've mentioned in the post and I've got a few scratchbuilt bookcases that need some attention too. I'll play some games with my kids soon so I can get some nice set-piece photos with all the pieces included.

Dungeon scenery Part1

I picked up a few resin pieces of dungeon furniture from Scotia Grendel  to add some interest and narrative to my Heroquest / Frostgrave games. There were a few casting issues which needed cleaning up, but otherwise they all do the part and look really good painted up:

I've got some scratchbuilt bookcases to do next as well as the original Heroquest scenery and then some Otherworld/GW/Foundry npc's to add the final layer of narrative to my games..

A shit load of projects

I've been blogging now for two years (it's the anniversary today) and the more I blog, the more ideas I seem to get. The quantity and scope of these ideas quickly snowball and I soon find myself trawling through google images for further inspiration and hobby websites to purchase the bits neeeded, all of which completelty overwhelms my actual blog entries and the actual time I can realistically allocate to making them happen. It's very quick and easy to make a few purchases when at the embryonic stage of these ideas (and they pile up quickly) and the arrival of them in the post leads initially to elation and a re-kindling of the excitement of that idea before it recedes into a slightly hazy memory as I have to stash the bits into the depths of a muddled to-do box that itself is hidden away in a hard-to-reach cupboard in the kitchen. There's always another project that I've made a start on and that needs to be finished first. To help keep these burgeoning ideas alive I have a huge "Ideas" folder on my laptop and on my phone (I must merge these one day) which includes research, images, annotations, sketches etc. I occasionally remember to re-visit this folder and when I do I am instantly again overwhelmed with the shit load of projects that I have to get around to doing.


This blogging space is great for trying to stay on top of it all, for setting realistic timeframes, for organising my thoughts for future projects and probably even more so for keeping tabs on the gamut of ongoing projects. Who else has a load of draft posts stashed on their blog, hinting and reminding of some of those embryonic, to-do ideas?





Right now I decided it's a good time to take stock with where I am with all of these hobby projects. So in an unusual step amongst a lot of the blogs I follow and certainly this one, I'll show a load of wip photos and reduce the effect of dropping "finished model bombs" which I have tended to do in my posts.
Let's start with my two, early days wip boxes, spot anything cool or interesting..? Can you see where I'm going with any of these?

Next up are some wip projects that are a bit further down the line, starting with some primed dungeon furniture for my Heroquest/Frostgrave family games. A combination of Grendel Scotia scenery and some original Heroquest parts which have been added too with some insulation foam to create a stone base and bits from my bitzbox to decorate the tables and stalls:

And here's the last batch of dungeon tiles, with some pretty patterns engraved onto the floor:

Next up; the models for a small Rogue Trader, Bob Olley warband, Squat, Ogryn, Ork, female cyborg? and a dinosaur. The dinosaur, nicked from my son's stash, adds to the wrinkle factor. He'll be given some guns and armour and perhaps even a bionic leg (I've a picture in my inspiration folder of course).

Sticking with 40k, I've got some more Heresy Gangers to add to my Freeway Fighter posse:

Here's another big project which I'm chomping on the bit (s) to get into, Nurgle Blightkings, 40k'd up with some steampunk additions. Yep, Blightkings, mashed with the drones, the Skiitari, some small clock cogs and a tank. Plus a load of other bits I couldn't be bothered to get out and photograph. I have a load of ideas and inspiration for this, but the gist of it is that these will be loosely based upon the original, classic and iconic Nurgle Champions from the Realms of Chaos, which I recently completed the collection and painting of:

Next up is a project I've wanted to do for ages, a trash-bash spaceship. It will be for my Logan's World Mercenary Warband and will be comprised largely from stuff I've saved from the recycling, as well as some old broken toys, some old computer parts and a few other bits I've picked up. This stuff is all hidden away in the depths of my garage. I've ordered a few additional bits from Zinge Industries so that I have hatches and doors to add a level of realistic detail. Can you see where this might be going?..

Ps. the decorated yoghurt bottles were a skittles game that my 4year old made for me on Father's day. We've had fun with it, but the wife will just chuck them if I don't rescue them... The sparkly decorations that he lovingly put on will be recycled as gems on some Frostgrave bases. See nothing goes to waste, everything can be added to my to-do list.

I've recently realised that my love of modelling, making, being creative and imaginative in three dimensions stems from my childhood love of Lego. Which of course has also been rekindled (much like my love of toy soldiers) by my children. They love Lego, we love making it together, so I was lucky enough to receive this from my kids (read wife) for Father's day:

It's possibly the first time that my wife has acknowledged my geekyness and love of toys/models, but I'm very happy doing this with my kids. As this is MY lego, they've been relegated to the role of parts finders, much to their disgust.

And finally something that I'm actually painting, although progress is slow as I'm distracted by my Lego Millenium Falcon and the European Championships (as well as all the usual life stuff getting in the way); a dragon ogre shaggoth conversion:

So, to conclude this lengthy post, here are the shitload of projects that I have, at one time or another, flying around in my imagination, in need of tying down:

Realm of Chaos Retinue Table challenge

Bitzbox warband challenge

Frostgrave Bestiary Challenge

Fighting fantasy Warband

Rogue Trader Post-Apocolyptic mercenary project

Dungeon Tiles



And projects I'll be starting:



Steampunk Nurgle warband, based upon the original Classic nurgle champions

Bob Olley warband with dinosaur

Trash bash space ship

Finishing a full 3rd edition Nurgle army

Orc and Gonlin mercenary contingent

Chaos Ally Mercenary contingent


Fuck me that's a lot of work. When will I be too old for all of this?