Small church

 

This little fella is based on the timeline small Norman church found here: https://www.timelineminiatures.co.uk/product/28mm-scale-buildings-28mm-small-norman-church. 

Timeline do a whole load of fairly bare-bones but really affordable kits that are perfect for tarting up like this.

Inspired by a Facebook post by Geoff over at Purple Lion Creations, I decided to clad it in Das for that stonework look. Mine's not as good as Geoff's work, but it works better for me than just textured or, god forbid, just painted mdf. It's a lot more work, but nothing worth doing is ever easy. 

First job is to roll the Das to about 2mm thickness. A rolling pin and greaseproof paper are your friends here. Then pva a wall of your choice and glue the Das to it. I then used a silicon clay shaper to create the stonework. Geoff uses a metal tool, and I did do one face of the tower with the metal dental tool, and it does look better, but christ it took time, so I went for the clay shaper as a speedier alternative.

I left some patches blank and textured them afterwards with filler, figuring it would look like patches of render. I'm not sure it worked, and if I'm entirely honest it was more an attempt to have to a few less stones, so in future I shall skip this entirely.

I textured the interior, and laid down some scored card to show flagstones or tiles or what have you.

I wanted this to do double duty, as a ww2 piece as well as a dark age / medievil piece, so I made two rooves. One thatched (Das again) and one tiled. And then because I'm a damn masochist, I decided I needed to be able to have a church with a spire too, so I used some epvc and plastic tubes to make one. It was a slapdash affair, lacking much detail and any form of verisimilitude to any spire known to man nor deity, but somehow it fits perfectly, does the job of representing a spire, and doesn't look like complete and utter crap, so I'm taking the win.

It stayed like this for ages, because I got sidetracked playing with Das. I'll show the results of that some other time.

I've just about finished painting the Dark Age'y version, and it's looking fairly alright, I think. It's a bit representational, and would give anyone concerned with strict historical accuracy the absolute heebie-jeebies, but I care not a jot. I come from a Warhammer background, with all the egregious borrowing from disparate periods that implies, along a certain degree of cartoonishness, and I shall not apologise for that. I'm probably going to come full circle and use the earlier stuff for fantasy gaming again at some point, so generic and repurposable is the order of the day. Here's some more photos:

I have to thank Geoff from Purple Lion Creations once again for being so generous with his knowledge on Facebook. He makes wonderful things. Go check him out.

More medievil and ww2 Normandy terrain is currently on the workbench, and I'll endeavour to post some pics of that when it's done, as well.