Paint Table Saturday 05 February 2022

As you can probably tell, I decided not to do a test-paint of the sci-fi buildings after finishing the WW2 Japanese batch. I photographed those and submitted the post on Thursday, then looked at what else was coming up in the queue and decided to shift to WW2 British Airborne. 

A while ago I bought the HQ group from Artizan along with a pack of seated paras. I decided to make up a diorama base to show them off. I got the building mostly painted on Thursday, then did some initial weathering yesterday. I also sorted out a terrain base for it to go on and thought that it might be fun to add dugout in a small bank nearby - I cut that from some blue XPS foam. I then spent a while cutting up coffee stirrers to make "planks" to line the inside. 

The darker sections of ground are where I had initially placed XPS shapes but removed them after deciding the rubble piles would be easier to make by a different method.

I also started on a roof for the dugout using some longer "planks" and some of the corrugated card "wrinkly tin" pieces I'd cut out when I was doing the jungle buildings last year. I also thought it might be handy to have some crates scattered around, so I dragged out the pack I bought from Debris of War at Salute. Those got primed today, before  a wash with Agrax Earthshade followed by drybrushing.

Of course, an HQ and dugout need sandbags and a ruined building needs rubble. To that end I got out my pack of terracotta Milliput and some Das air drying clay. I started making sandbags with Milliput until I realised that with the number I would need that it might be better to switch to white Das clay. I also wanted to make some brick rubble, so I first flattened out the rest of the Milliput and applied a brick texture roller. That didn't look like it would produce enough bricks, so I also rolled out some terracotta Das clay and textured that as well. After the texture rolling, I scored along the brick courses to make them easier to break apart when they had cured.

Clockwise, beginning top left: sandbags; individual Milliput bricks; individual Das bricks; "blocks" of Das bricks.

I'll do a bit more work on the diorama base tomorrow, probably adding the rubble and sandbags, then on Monday I will switch to painting the British Airborne figures.