Warhammer Townscape challenge part 4: wherein tower 35 is finished and I actually make a deadline

This month most of my focus was on the build-off between my blog, The Periodic Painting Table and  The War Crow, This was not just some frivolous hackery with glue and foamboard, this was the First International Townscape Challenge (queue impressive trumpet sounds here). With nothing less than two self-applied pats on the back at stake, I needed to finish on time and I am glad to say I did. Here is the result of my entry.

Townscape 35. Tower, same dimensions, door in the same place, but re-imagined to better fit my taste. 

I wasn't the first to finish my building. That honor goes to Bodvoc/Stuart over at The War Crow. He made a bakery out of 13. Tower house.

The Townscape 13. Tower House re-imagined as a bakery by Stuart over at The War Crow. 

I love the addition of the tables with bread and the oven besides the house. This goes right up on my list of great ideas to steal somewhere in the future. From a gaming perspective the small wall connecting the main building to the oven will give a nice hiding spot for a small unit (or a few Eshin Night Runners (squeee!)). 

Townscape 25. Tavern being build by John over at the Periodic Painting Table.

 MisterC/John is hard at work at his version of the 25. Tavern building. I think this is the best building in the entire Townscape book. It is also the most complicated one, so John has my sympathy working on this one with a deadline added. The extra wing to the off side of the building makes it an even more impressive build. We should however start playing tense 'movie finale' music as the unbelievably serious and not at all tongue in cheek deadline is approaching. Thinks of the pats on the back John! Do not miss out!!! ;) 

Adding wallops of textile hardener to polystyrene helps toughen it up without leaving noticeable marks you risk using PVA.

Back to my tower. Over the course of this week I added detail to the model. Luckily the tower is not the most complicated build in the book (to put it mildly). Before the weekend started, I also added textile hardener to all the foam. This gloopy stuff is faintly reminiscent of PVA glue, but (I think) it soaks itself into the material better (oh dear is this sentence grammatically correct?). You can apply a (slightly) thicker layer without getting ugly drops of dried glue at unfortunate places. As an added benefit (actually the reason to do this at all) it adds significant strength to the foam, making it possible to handle it during gaming (assuming your opponent isn't a spiritual descendant of Genghis Khan). 

I know I should use cheaper paints for my scenery, but I just like working with model paints too much. 

After the textile hardener I airbrushed the building with Vallejo Black Surface primer. Saturday morning I had a primed building ready for paint. After checking out my inspiration pictures (holding paint pots next to my screen at the first picture of Château de Beaufort) I decided to use Vallejo Model Color Sand (71.028) as the base color. I airbrushed the entire tower with two coats of it, then I added a bit of white to the sand to airbrush the bottom third and top third of the stones lighter (following the contours of stones with a free hand). Next I added a bit of Nato Black to the mix (it was the closest dark airbrush color to hand). I used this to streak some dark areas on the surface. I also painted a few blocks of stone and the rampart tops German Grey, just to provide a bit of distraction from the endless yellow browns. Rule number one when painting stone surfaces (my personal rule at least): break the monotony. After this I sat the tower aside and distracted myself by blocking in the base colors of rather a lot of elves and one dwarf. 

Drybrushing has an ill reputation amongst many wargame painters, I think that is underserved as it is a very nice tool if used appropriately (as with all tools (except hammers, you can always use a hammer to solve problems (and caulk (but I'm getting very far of topic here)))).

When the paint had properly dried (well, was dry enough) I took the only useful Dry paint in GW's assortment (Tyrant Skull) and a big old makeup brush to drybrush the entirety of the tower. A properly applied drybrush works wonders in tying all the colors together. I also airbrushed the base with Dark Russian Brown. The overspray of this always ends up hitting the bottom of the model which is good as it helps tie the building to its base (looking over my text, I think I did this before the drybrushing step). 

The back of the tower. Looking at the picture I should've added a dead necromancer memorial plate here.

Basically the building was done at that point (paint-wise), but I thought it looked a bit bland. So I watered down a some Vallejo Sepia wash and applied this to all the stone cracks and deeper dinges in the building. After this dried the model looked a lot more textures and interesting. 

I love painting dwarves. I have a tray full of primed ones and I can't quite grasp why I haven't finished them (as I type this I'm looking at all the other models I haven't quite finished yet...erm...next topic!)

Oh I almost forget to mention the door and the roof hatch. I painted these with Vallejo Game Colour Charred Brown. I recently picked up a pot of this (as I ran out of Doombull Brown and really wanted something Burnt Umber-like that wasn't in a bloody GW pot) and together with Scalecolor Brown Dubai it is becoming my go-to brown. After painting the door I added some white to the umber to lighten it up, painting streaks over the previous layer to emphasize the planks. I painted the hinges German Grey, mixing/blending a bit of white into the wet paint to make it look interesting. One of the easiest traps to walk into is using a metallic color to paint hinges. They never are metal colored (well almost never). For obvious reasons people don't want their hinges to rust, so they paint them with a thick paint. In most older buildings I visit the go-to color seems to be black. Picking a grey for my model's hinges gives it a properly ancient look (without making all the detail invisible from a distance). 

I actually picked up this guy to sell him to a collector, but it turned out he's sold for silly money on e-bay. As we couldn't agree on price I thought what the hell, and slapped paint on him myself. I can't fully follow this semi-logical train of thought myself either. 

With the paint further dry (and my Dwarf and Elves steadily progressing) I could base the model. I found an anemic and ugly little railroad pine tree in my bits box and decided it was a perfect companion to my tower. I added it to the base with PVA and camouflaged it into the whole using Vallejo Dark Earth Texture. As you can see above, I'm using a completely inappropriate picture to illustrate this text. Scroll up and go 'aha' to see the tree ;)

I've always wanted to own a fully painted dwarf army. And I think I will satisfy that ambition in the next few years. After all my Gob-Lobber needs back-up.

the rest of my basing consisted of applying a layer of PVA everywhere I wanted grass (very carefully around the tree as I didn't wait for the texture paint to properly settle (#impatience)). then I added some grass tufts (by GamersGrass) and flowers by the same company. When I was properly satisfied by this, I used pincers to push thick wads of a static grass mix into the PVA (the grass as mixed by me using different colors by Woodland Scenics). Now all that was left was waiting for the glue to dry and the sun to rise so I could take some proper pictures. 

Hey another necromancer at the tower. what is he doing there? Sounds like he's saying something... Klaatu barada nikto? What the hell does that mean?

Here's a final shot of the tower with my favorite Necromancer model at its base in honor of the compatriot of his I shot of the ramparts many, many years ago. What is he raising out of the ground there? Don't tell me its his former colleague! Looks like I have to run (and plan an appropriately themed game around this tower). Now on to the self-applied pats to the back and - almost as important to me - I can now say I finished the entire Townscape without making a reservation about the 35. Tower.

Cheers to John and Stuart, it was a lot of fun to do a build-off. When is the next one?