So I saw this hashtag #wargamingdna on my twitter feed a few days ago and it got me wondering about my gateway into this hobby and since I tend to lurk and post rarely on most social media I thought here might be a good place to share how I got into the hobby in a few images.
And it pretty much happened in that order all while playing a huge amount of Basic and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Following on from my last post.
Years ago I had tried to do thatching using the towel method, and the result was what you see above, the hand towel was something I picked up cheap at a 2 dollar store, and in the end proved too thin to look good, and I got a better result out of a $5 bath towel.
I pretty much just followed the instructions on Hour of Wolves. Strips of towel were glued into position onto the roof with a generous overlap all round. It was then coated with a liberal application of 50/50 PVA and brown paint, in this case Raw Umber. A second coat was added after 24hrs, and then after another 24hrs the towel was trimmed so the roof would fit between the end timbers. A further coat was added mainly at teh ends where the original towel (after trimming) was visible. After drying , dry brushing with Raw Sienna, Naples Yellow, and Buff Titanium where applied randomly to give the roof its colour. The stone work is simply a base of black, then a wet/dry brush with a dark grey, followed, after drying, with a dry brush of a lighter grey. The door is scratch made from balsa with the planks inscribed with a pencil before painting.
There is a lot of waiting in making the thatch with long drying times, but the overall effect of the strips of towel compared to the one piece is noticeable, and I think will remain my “go to” for thatch for now on. Also having got to play with some Hirst Arts bricks again I decided to “recycle” a lot of my old Warhammer buildings, and make some terrain more suited for both my Dark Ages, and for my Dwarves and Undead to fight over.
The only reason I have little to show so far is that “recycling” PVA glued plaster blocks takes time, as does making terrain in general, the wait period for things to dry is often longer than the doing period of action.
Oh well, back to catching up on the last 3 seasons of Supernatural, while I wait.
So as part of my Dark Ages project I decided I needed a few buildings, and unfortunately Dark Ages buildings means the one thing I have always hated trying to model: thatching.
I was thinking that maybe teddy bear fur would be the best option, but a quick online search lead me to Hour of Wolves, where the author does an opinion piece on different techniques for success and seems to come down on the side of using towel cut into strips. I have used the towel method, but never in strips, so maybe this is the way forward.
Time to go buy a cheap towel with a decent pile.
The Gun Bar 