Tuesday 3 June 2014

Dark Age Cottage finished !

After an enjoyable saturday with a great game of Saga (AAR will follow soon) I found some time on sunday to sit down at the painting table and work a bit on my Dark Ages cottage. For some time I had both unexpected and appreciated help:
Viktoria will turn 4 this August and seeing me at the painting desk has been fascinating for her since her youngest days. She always wants to "help" me or paint some figures on her own and with some old remains of my lead mountain I let her do as she wants. Anyway she helped me with some terrain pieces already and spread sand on them or easy tasks like this. But this weekend we took the gloves off. First I let her slather the teddy fur for the roof of the cottage with white glue and on sunday she helped my to put a dark brown whash (Armypainter Strong Tone) on the coloured fur. Of course I'm still carefull which tasks to grant her but this weekend our joint work went really good.
So only a few finishing touches for me to do. Actually I stuck to Mirco's excellent painting tutorial for the Dark Age barn, at least as close as possible. Teddy fur was a completely new material for me so this it has been an interesting experience to work with this stuff. Actually it is much easier to use than I thought.
Besides this I didn't use anything too special: As always the reliable paints from Vallejo's Model Colour range, some Armypainter washes, pigments, my homemade terrain colour and different grass tufts, moss patches, some clump foliage and some static grass.
Really I like the result of my humble work. But that's mostly due to the excellence of the kit. The parts were well cast, needed only little cleaning and fitted very well. Actually there was no need to fill any gaps or to correct warped pieces. The resin was excellent to paint which can sometime be a problem.
All things considered the kit is really worth the 36€ Stronghold Terrain is charging for it. For value you get a great kit which is not only technically done well but historically accurate. Remarkably Mirco and Elmar sculpt their models strictly after examples they found reconstructed in open air museums. So I will gladly build up my Dark Ages village with some of their nice houses. Next on my workbench is the pit house which I bought earlier this year. My charming apprentice and I already started...

24 comments:

  1. Excellent job. Must admit I was a little surprised at the amount of timber on top of the thatch - I havent seen that in other versions of dark age buildings

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    1. Hi Scotty,

      I don't know where exactly Mirco and Elmar found the example for their kit. But in German musuems there are a couple of examples for such houses. For example near Groß Raden in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:
      http://www.freilichtmuseum-gross-raden.de/index.html

      If you're interested in more details then drop me an email and I'll try to reach the guys from Stronghold Terrain.

      Cheers
      Stefan

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    2. Very interesting, thanks for the link.

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  2. Great work, Monty - very convincing and to get help too - perfect :)

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  3. Excellent work !!
    it seems that your little apprentice gave you a great help!
    well done !

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  4. Well done to both of you as this looks superb!

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  5. Lovely work Stefan and great to have help from the little one!

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  6. Excellent result Stefan! Wonderful looking building!

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  7. That is wonderful work there and I am going to have to looking into these chaps myself. Great guide

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  8. Very nice work Monty and always good to get a helping hand! These buildings are on my list of things to buy.

    Christopher

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  9. That has turned out great. Who knows, you might be training up a future painting prodigy!

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  10. Lucky man, being able to work on a project like this with your daughter! And great results too.

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  11. Wonderful stuff Stefan, both the outcome and the fact you shared it with your daughter. Keep at it mate and soon you can double your output when she's fully trained :-)

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  12. Great looking building. Well done.

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  13. Thanks a lot mates.
    It was indeed real fun to have Viktoria help me. I hope she'll keep the interest in Daddy's hobby. If so I would enjoy to integrate her more. If not I wouldn't push her.

    We'll see...

    Cheers
    Stefan

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  14. Moi (= Hi)
    Great work.
    Many good and impressive features, such as the roof, and the planking below the roof
    Maybe reason is little and endearing helper...

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  15. Wonderful post Monty! Lovely job by you and your little helper. :-)

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  16. Wonderfull building! And good work of the little lady! She gots talent!

    Greetings
    Peter

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  17. You two did a wonderful job on that kit. I've always wanted one of these but the shipping is just too much to swallow... Perhaps I'll pick one up the next time we travel over the Pond.

    Great work!

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    1. Many thanks, Curt.
      Transatlantic shipping is a real problem sometimes I agree.

      Cheers
      Stefan

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  18. That looks absolutely fantastic! Inspiring work Monty!

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  19. About the wooden 'strakes'. Just saw the last episode of the Danish '1864' series and in some of the shots( spoiler!!!) when the surviving brother returns home, are houses with roofs exactly like this.

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