Friday, December 30, 2011

Completed Warhammer Chapel


*Squeek*
I've been away a long time... (Curse you Skyrim and Battlefield 3!)
...but now I'm back, and hope to continue to update the site with Skaven-related painting projects. I have also decided to add other bits and pieces. Naturally, these will all be relevant to my Skaven hobby and Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

Case in point, WFB scenery and terrain - the first of which is this Games Workshop Chapel that I bought before Christmas and have just finished. I will add new terrain and scenery pictures to the new "Scenery" page of the blog, but in the meantime I thought I would share some pics and (below them) some lessons learned.

Hope you like it - all constructive criticism welcome!

Completed model, with washes and drybrushing
With Clanrat for scale
...Clanrats!
Stages:
1. Basecoat.


2. Washes:
3. Drybrushing:
Finished item.
Washed and Drybrushed
Washed and Drybrushed
The kit comes with lots of options, including weather vanes, chimneys, decorations for the roof, door options and more, (which you can see on the GW Chapel product page) but I decided to keep this one very simple and dispense with most of the bits and pieces. The simple fact is that I tend to take my scenery with me when travelling to a game and the more bits there are, the more likely they are to break off!

Lessons learned:
1. Allow more time than you think for painting structures. They look simple, but actually they contain as much, or more detail, than most troops. Skulls, decorations, window panes, statues, rivets, cracks etc can all take a long time!
2. Add statues later. Paint the main structure first, and paint any statues or other objects to be added separately. In this case, it was an real pain to get behind the statues to paint the building structure and it still looks untidy. If I had painted the structure first and then glued on already-painted statues it would all look better (and have save time in terms of touch ups.)
3. Don't rush your drybrushing. I did, and the roof ended up looking "streaky". Make sure that your drybrush really is nearly devoid of paint, and then drybrush lightly at first, building up from there. Mine came out OK but only when viewed from a distance.
4. Pay extra attention when gluing walls together. Despite having filed everything down, when I glued the main structure together I ended up with a lot of walls and corners that didn't quite match. This is really visible when painted.

Overall though, I think it looks fine when viewed from a distance.

Thanks for visiting and see you again soon, when I will post pics of my completed Citadel Realm of Battle Gameboard...
:-)

Cheers!
*SQUEEEK!*

8 comments:

  1. heyyyy wellcome back man!!!!
    i gotta try those scenry stuff :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Longe time no hear!

    Welcome back:) for my other hobby, modeltrains i
    have to paint very often scerey stuff like buildings;)

    Wish you all the best for 2012!

    Greetings,

    Tis

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Tis
    @Dancing Platypuss
    Thanks for the good wishes - it is great to be back! Hope you have a Happy New Year and a great 2012, both on and off the gaming table!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nicely done with the chapel. I agree with you about the bits likely to snap off, so haven't attached most of them to mine.

    I didn't put the statues on mine either, they ended up going onto my Witchfate Tor instead.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @ModernKiwi
    How did you find Witchfate Tor to paint. I am quite interested in that or Dreadstone Blight, but DB, while not as impressive, certainly looks easier to paint!
    Thanks for stopping by TCH by the way! Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  6. You have done an excellent job with that building.
    I only hope I can get my scratch built one half as good - well done :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Witchfate Tor isn't too bad to paint (although I seemed to go through an entire pot of Codex Grey). Assembling it on the other hand is another story altogether. Each levels walls are made up of four parts which interlock with each other - badly. Lots of work with the craft knife and file to get them to fit together. Then they fall apart when a stiff breeze goes past - more cursing. Finally I ended up pinning each piece to it's neighbour with two pins (top and bottom) which worked out OK.

    Took about a week to do with 30 mins a night. Of course if you do one, you'll have to Skaven-ify it a bit. Add a leftover Screaming bell, some emergency stocks of warpstone and a Grey Seer on top (where he belongs yes-yes).

    Happy New Year too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. @ModernKiwi - thanks for the info. I figured there would be a lot of grey involved!
    :-) RE: walls not fitting...I had the same problem with the Chapel. VERY frustrating. I like the image of a Grey Seer atop the Tor. Now I just have to save up and get one!

    ReplyDelete