Blog: Old Man Paints – Oldhammer Wargaming Figures[/url]
Owner: OldManPaints
Author: Tideswellman / Old Man Paints
Post: How I made The Oldhammer Castle For BOYL 2023
This post is an introduction to the model /Diarama I made for Bringoutyourlead 2023. I started it back in April or May of 2023 but then my mother’s illness interrupted the process as I had more important things to attend to. Sadly, She passed away in June of this year and to be honest, I came close to just quitting the whole thing, but for some reason, I decided that I’d come this far and best to press on, I’m glad I did. I hope you enjoy the diorama.
I’d always wanted to get a Great Spined Dragon but felt it would never happen. I’m way too tight-fisted to buy a 40-year-old spined Dragon that every collector will pay top dollar for. I’d have to sell a kidney or something to fund it, never gonna happen…. or so I thought.
Then, luck smiled on me and I started a conversation with David Wood of the Little soldier company. David and I kept chatting at successive BOYL’s, and he ended up bringing me a spined dragon in return for some website marketing expertise. Which is handy, because I don’t have any other expertise to offer. I got a spined Dragon Miniature. Now, how to paint it.
I cleaned it up and sanded it and cut all the mould lines off, washed it and sanded it and BROKE it in about 4 places. BUGGGGGGER! Primed it twice, sealed it, built it and then started to get some paint on it. I quickly stopped though because I had to temper my enthusiasm with the practical reality of making some kind of a base for it.
My first thought was some rough, scorched ground, which I started and then stopped because I’d had an epiphany. Actually, it wasn’t a REAL epiphany, it was a bloody stupid idea that “normal Phil” would have scoffed at and then walked the other way….but this was stressed out, Phil. He’s not “cheeky chappy, Oldmanpaints Phil”, he’s more of a manic depressive “let’s drink whiskey and paint till 4am”, kinda idiot. It was that Phil.
So, what to do…? Well, first things first, grab that bit of MDF I cut the original base from and let’s use it…the whole damn thing. You can see I’d slapped some base coat on the dragon, but that was about it.
The small base just wasn’t inspiring me.
I cut a big ass rectangle out and positioned the original base onto it…I’d already pinned the dragon to it and didn’t have the stomach to unpick the pinning for fear of breakages….so whatever I did, I’d have to build up the base. I’d better make a plan…at least the “back of a fag packet” plan.
So, I thought “Let’s do a castle, a wrecked castle, just one room, some castle walls with the dragon in the middle”.
Then I thought, let’s add…..
Anyhoo this is the first sketch idea…
Back of the fag packet sketch plan. I’m glad I did this now.
I thought I’d better make some kind of key ..in case anyone was interested and in case I forgot what my crappy arial drawing meant.
plan part 2. I deviated a little but not too much.
So, armed with a madcap plan…I started pulling together some materials and cracking on. I went over to Currys, (the electrical place), and asked them if they had any Polystyrene packaging left over, they did and gave me plenty. So I started hacking at it to shape some walls. I borrowed my daughter’s Glue gun…which, I had initially thought was a waste of time, a fad…until I actually used it and discovered..it was a really useful tool to get started. At this stage, I was feeling pretty optimistic. The glue gun worked well, once I unclogged it and I managed to cut some walls and get a frame up quickly.
Next was planning the floor. Here I felt that I had 2 options. A plank floor or a stone floor. I thought a stone floor might be a bit less tricky. The first job was to build up the basic height of the floor to match the existing height of the dragon’s base. To do this I just cut some thick cardboard out and fashioned it around the dragon’s base. *I have no idea what I’m doing here…
So I’d picked up some thin XPF foam from “The Range” and then downloaded a patio plan from the web. I copied it…drew it on some tracing paper then pricked it out into the foam before using the back of a knife to etch the shapes of the flagstones into the foam.
Adding the thin foam with the marked-out flagstones.
The key is to keep testing it to see how each elements works together.
Once I’d gotten the floor into place…and I should point out that with me, nothing has to be perfect. I’m a “stuff it in there”, kinda guy. I made some little steps from Polystyrene…and cut a hole in the wall for the Garderobe, as you can see in the image above.
For some reason, I thought this would be easy…and to be fair it was. My only regret was that I didn’t make it out of cardboard and stick balsa planks onto it. Instead, I chose to make it out of balsa and nearly broke it, a million times. You can see what I did in the photos below. Once I’d made the top and sides, glued them with superglue, I put some cardboard through the widows to help it to hold its shape whilst the glue dried. I positioned it over the hole I’d cut in the wall pinning it with cocktail sticks (toothpicks).
Next, I had to make a landing and some stairs up to it. Again, I had no idea how to do any of this so I was just winging it and learning on the go. One thing I have learned in life is… if you THINK you can do something, you can. Plus, I’m tenacious…and don’t like to give up on a project.
It’s not perfect. But in my mind, it fits with an improvised castle…more functional than aesthetic.
Ok, so the main build bits are largely done. I thought a bit of primer might be the next step. Actually, I was wrong. I should have built the wall bricks first and added the paster to the inside but hey…this was a learning journey, and I was totally winging it. I always prime outside in the garden as I’m sensitive to thinners.
The priming was a massive fail, the primer didn’t seem to like Polystyrene or the other way around. So I ended up painting the whole thing black with some cheap craft acrylic. The polystyrene texture was still very strong though, later I’d come up with a few solutions for that and if I’d had more time, I would have eliminated it completely.
The walls were a worry for me and remain the worst aspect of the model in my opinion. They look OK, but the pattern of the polystyrene shows through in way too many places, despite me treating it liberally with Mod Podge and paint, plaster etc. At first, I had no clue how I was going to do the brickwork. I’d seen posts on social media showing people building vast buildings with little blue blocks. ] which looked awfully tedious. After researching around I thought “Look, it’s the only way, so get on with it”. And to be fair, it was very easy and quite therapeutic.
I didn’t have the blue foam that most diorama makers seem to have …Instead, I opted for Foam chips the ones that look like “cheesy wotsits / Cheetos” I cut them into shape and glued them in place using Modpodge. I used MP because it seemed to dry a lot faster than normal PVA.
Mortar
I had no idea how I was going to do the mortar…but came up with the idea that if I use Polyfiller mixed with sand, and then water it down, I could tilt the castle and pour the mortar all over the walls to create that “patched and patched again” look
I then painted the exterior walls black with a mix of hobby acrylic and Mod Podge to help hold it and prevent it from cracking. It created a bit of a glossy texture but I felt that added to its charm…as an old decaying castle wall might well look wet in places, especially if it’s covered in moss and such like.
Next, it was time to add the flock to create that mossy look. Ideally, I would have remembered to add colour to the various blocks and then do the dry brushing first…but to hell with convention.
Next came the interior walls which I did with plaster scraped across the wall and then scratched off in certain places. It looked rubbish but improved when I added some green and brown wash to look as though water had run down allowing the birth of mould and algae.
Then it was a bit of dry brushing on all the wood, just to make it look weathered. Again I added some green and brown washes just to make things look as though nature was overrunning the place.
Ornaments /decorations
I’d had a good think about what I needed to embellish the scene, and I had a plan to buy some stuff and make the rest. Remember the list from earlier? Well, those bits needed actioning. I scoured the web for lots of inspiration, pictures of model walls, treasure, crows, gibbets, dead minis etc.
A heap of treasure.
Marcel from the Crown of Command Podcast Discord group, kindly sent me some treasure pieces that he 3d printed for me. The scale might have been a touch large upon reflection but actually, they really filled in the spaces well. He also sent some skeletons and some soldiers to be used as statues. I used a fair bit of what he sent me and the couple of bits I didn’t use will roll into the next big project I’m sure.
Some marauding adventurers want to steal the treasure.
I had a couple of figures that fitted the bill perfectly and then I bought a couple more to make a larger group. at the time of writing, I still don’t know if I’ll use them all. * In the end I settled for an attacking party of 4 but I madly forgot to add the Elf. Crazy, I know.
the attackers were a knight adventurer with a lamp. I’d painted him up and didn’t really love the cut of his gib. Rather than send him to the strip jar, I thought he would work OK as a background figure, placed coming out of the spiral staircase.
Next, I had a Barbarian attacking with an axe. I positioned him running down the small staircase, his pose really suits that position. Then I have a Dwarf with an axe. I don’t think they know what they are doing. They are all going to die screaming.
A spiral staircase
This consisted of a dowl rod. I then measured my stairwell which was just part of the polystyrene moulding and used a compass to draw a circle. I cut out a few circles out of the card, dividing the circles into 1/8ths. these would be my templates. Then I cut some tubes out of XPF foam and sliced the tubes. then I divided the slices into 8ths. These would be my steps. I began sticking the steps to the dowel pole, going around and around until I reached the desired height. I just then glued it in place. Initially, it looked totally crap. It certainly could have been done a lot better but, as i have said a few times, this was a learning curve. As I added a few other elements It started to look more realistic. I think it will do, anyway.
looks a bit naff like this but it kind a works in situ
An Oubliette with a skeleton and reeds
Making the Oubliette was simple because the void was already in the Polystyrene. All I had to do was paint the inside black, add a skeleton and make a suitable hatch. The hatch was made from the top off a plastic dispenser and the bars are just plastic rods from my local model shop, WD Models in Chesterfield. Later in the project, I added a hinge cut from small loops of plastic-card and threaded a metal pin through it. The reeds are simple just some long yellow grass by Javis.co.uk
Once painted the Oubliette Grate looks much more realistic. It’s perhaps a little larger than what I wanted but it looks OK, once It had had a couple of coats of Dirty down Rust effect..
Oubliette, made from soap dispenser and plasticard pipe
Adding some rust effect and dry brushing silver over the top makes this grate look more realistic
Some dead knights and people, a skeleton chained to the wall.
Next, I needed the dead. I tried to sculpt some but they weren’t that great. They were ok for certain semi-hidden places but as centrepiece minis, I needed something better. I was aware that Aaron Howdle had sculpted a load and flogged them to Heyland terrain. So I picked a few of their Fatal Fantasy miniatures… up to use as well as a couple of skeletons from Alternative Armies
Painting up the bits and bobs
Aaron Howdle
Aaron Howdle
DAS clay sculpt
sculping around a skull
DAS clay sculpt
I wanted to create either some heraldic pennants or shields, for a long time it was shields, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I really ran out of time on this project. Pennants I felt i could do.
First of all, I found an image of a pennant online and downloaded the template. I then went and searched for the family crests of 5 surnames in my family.
They are:
My Irish Side Geoghegan and Marsden.
My Jamaican side Phillips and Harvey
and the English Adoptive side, Gregory.
Once I’d managed to find the images…I overlaid the crests onto the pennant template in Photoshop and created a rough mockup of each one which I then downloaded and printed out.
That’s when I found out my printer had run out of coloured ink. No worries there was just enough of an outline for me to freehand paint the pennants. * I know they look a bit happhazzzard and scruffy, but it’s called Warhammer, not ParadeHammer. I like my figures to look as though they have real lives. Plus I really can’t paint super-cleanly to save my life.
I wanted to tip my hat to the greats without doing it in a cringey or over-the-top. I settled upon creating a portrait of John Blanche and one of Brian Ansell. Brian Ansell lives at the real Stoke Hall, so I thought it might be fun to imagine his ancestor being someone important at STOWK hall. I’m not bad at freehand but a portrait painter, I am not, so how best to do this was my concern.
The paintings were done by grabbing some images of John Blanche and Brian Ansell, the blanch one was run through an Ai avatar generator. The Ansell one just got photoshopped. Once they were suitably tweaked I created the frames from thin XPF foam and scratched up the surface to make the filigree effect that you often see on old oil paintings, then 2 or 3 coats of gloss varnish…and scratched them up with a dentist tool.
I have a couple of photos of both John and Bryan, but neither was quite right for what I wanted here. I found an image of John and fed it into some AI program. Don’t ask me which, I don’t remember. I created 100 images of him in different scenarios. I chose one that looked suitable and then printed it out. I then painted a bit over the top and varnished it to make it look more realistic as a portrait. Once it had dried hard I scratched it with a sculpting tool to make it look past its best.
The frames were made from the same thin foam that I used for the flagstones and the patterning was done using a cocktail stick. I painted them dark brown and then dry-brushed them with copper and then gold.
Next I started on the dragon. i cant give you all the WIPS here because they don’t exist. there would be hundreds…but here’s a few.
Something I have learned from looking at many other dioramas is the thing that makes them pop is the myriad of little things that at first you don’t notice. So I wanted to add lots of those.
@Marvellousminis from my insta kindly sent me some gallows and a Gibbet. When they arrived the Gibbet was perfect but the gallows were a wee bit too small. I considered not using them and scratch building a bigger one but I was running out of time and TBH I didn’t really relish building them, as all the other constructions such as a staircase etc had proved a bit tricky. In the end, I settled for customising them with superglue, a wooden ice cream spoon and some greenstuff and a jewellers chain. Not perfect but functional.
I had a plan to do more with this…but time and a simple mistake of not adding enough fall to the terrain meant I had to compromise. In the end, I simply hollowed out a hole…painted it black inside…glued down a load of small chippings, added foliage, then, I added a 3D-printed Resin mesma- toad that @ketiltrout sent me ages ago. The bars were simple green garden wire pushed up into the walls. I didn’t even glue them, just painted them black then coated in dirtydown rust effect and drybrushed them with silver.
The battlements were, well, battered. So, in fact, they were pretty easy to do…I used balsa to create floorboards and platforms. Then I painted and added some skeletons, and discarded weaponry.
So this was pretty much the last parts of scenery. There was just so many little toches to attend to I wondered, several times if I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
This unfortunate chap starved to death after being forgotten about
Blocks and Flocks
Blocks and Flocks
shot of hand made parts to the castle
this shot depicts the garderobe platform. The curtain pole is just wire with green stuff blobs on the end, then painted gold and secured by small wire clips. The curtain is just folded paper, cut and scratched to look weathered. It was one of the most fiddly parts of the whole job.
this shot depicts the garderobe platform. The curtain pole is just wire with green stuff blobs on the end, then painted gold and secured by small wire clips.
The plaster is real plaster spread onto the wall with my finger to make it look rough. then weathered with watered down paint. the keys by the oubliette, are from an Oldschool Miniatures giant.
The plaster is real plaster spread onto the wall with my finger to make it look rough. then weathered with watered down paint. the keys by the oubliette, are from an Oldschool Miniatures giant.
Right then that is pretty much all the step by steps. The overall quality of this model wasn’t quite what I was hoping, but overall, I feel the sheer volume and variety of the components helped its credibility. Regardless, I feel pretty happy with it because it really was the first diorama that I’ve made since I was about 15.
rt 0-p
I hope you enjoyed reading the process and looking at the photos.
If you did, please leave a like and a comment and maybe share the link on social media. That would help me to keep going and make more models for our shared enjoyment.
Continue reading on the Old Man Paints blog
Owner: OldManPaints
Author: Tideswellman / Old Man Paints
Post: How I made The Oldhammer Castle For BOYL 2023
This post is an introduction to the model /Diarama I made for Bringoutyourlead 2023. I started it back in April or May of 2023 but then my mother’s illness interrupted the process as I had more important things to attend to. Sadly, She passed away in June of this year and to be honest, I came close to just quitting the whole thing, but for some reason, I decided that I’d come this far and best to press on, I’m glad I did. I hope you enjoy the diorama.
I’d always wanted to get a Great Spined Dragon but felt it would never happen. I’m way too tight-fisted to buy a 40-year-old spined Dragon that every collector will pay top dollar for. I’d have to sell a kidney or something to fund it, never gonna happen…. or so I thought.
Then, luck smiled on me and I started a conversation with David Wood of the Little soldier company. David and I kept chatting at successive BOYL’s, and he ended up bringing me a spined dragon in return for some website marketing expertise. Which is handy, because I don’t have any other expertise to offer. I got a spined Dragon Miniature. Now, how to paint it.
I cleaned it up and sanded it and cut all the mould lines off, washed it and sanded it and BROKE it in about 4 places. BUGGGGGGER! Primed it twice, sealed it, built it and then started to get some paint on it. I quickly stopped though because I had to temper my enthusiasm with the practical reality of making some kind of a base for it.
My first thought was some rough, scorched ground, which I started and then stopped because I’d had an epiphany. Actually, it wasn’t a REAL epiphany, it was a bloody stupid idea that “normal Phil” would have scoffed at and then walked the other way….but this was stressed out, Phil. He’s not “cheeky chappy, Oldmanpaints Phil”, he’s more of a manic depressive “let’s drink whiskey and paint till 4am”, kinda idiot. It was that Phil.
Let’s 5x the MDF base
So, what to do…? Well, first things first, grab that bit of MDF I cut the original base from and let’s use it…the whole damn thing. You can see I’d slapped some base coat on the dragon, but that was about it.
The small base just wasn’t inspiring me.
I cut a big ass rectangle out and positioned the original base onto it…I’d already pinned the dragon to it and didn’t have the stomach to unpick the pinning for fear of breakages….so whatever I did, I’d have to build up the base. I’d better make a plan…at least the “back of a fag packet” plan.
So, I thought “Let’s do a castle, a wrecked castle, just one room, some castle walls with the dragon in the middle”.
Then I thought, let’s add…..
- A heap of treasure.
- Some marauding adventurers trying to steal the treasure.
- A spiral staircase (WHY, no idea, let’s just make it more complicated for no good reason)
- A drain/sewer with a mutant toad in it. (Why, because I have one that Ketiltrout sent to me, may as well use it.
- A jail cell, with a prisoner or dead prisoner, maybe some straw..chain him to the wall, give him a widescreen TV (joke)
- An Oubliette (forget them dungeon), with a skeleton and reeds
- A mini staircase down to the dragon chamber.
- Some fallen adventurers whose ropes snapped trying to climb in to grab the treasure
- A gallows and gibbet.
- Some crows and maybe a cheeky magpie
- A wooden staircase to a platform with a Garderobe. (ancient toilet -WHY?)
- Some Ash/Poo piles of unfortunate adventurers.
- Some dead knights and people, and a skeletons
- Lots of treasure
- Some heraldic shields or pennants with all the houses from my family tree
- Some funny(ish) nods to Blanche and Ansell
Anyhoo this is the first sketch idea…
Castle hmmm…..Castle Stowk ;D
Back of the fag packet sketch plan. I’m glad I did this now.
I thought I’d better make some kind of key ..in case anyone was interested and in case I forgot what my crappy arial drawing meant.
plan part 2. I deviated a little but not too much.
So, armed with a madcap plan…I started pulling together some materials and cracking on. I went over to Currys, (the electrical place), and asked them if they had any Polystyrene packaging left over, they did and gave me plenty. So I started hacking at it to shape some walls. I borrowed my daughter’s Glue gun…which, I had initially thought was a waste of time, a fad…until I actually used it and discovered..it was a really useful tool to get started. At this stage, I was feeling pretty optimistic. The glue gun worked well, once I unclogged it and I managed to cut some walls and get a frame up quickly.
Making the Castle Floor
Next was planning the floor. Here I felt that I had 2 options. A plank floor or a stone floor. I thought a stone floor might be a bit less tricky. The first job was to build up the basic height of the floor to match the existing height of the dragon’s base. To do this I just cut some thick cardboard out and fashioned it around the dragon’s base. *I have no idea what I’m doing here…
So I’d picked up some thin XPF foam from “The Range” and then downloaded a patio plan from the web. I copied it…drew it on some tracing paper then pricked it out into the foam before using the back of a knife to etch the shapes of the flagstones into the foam.
Adding the thin foam with the marked-out flagstones.
The key is to keep testing it to see how each elements works together.
Once I’d gotten the floor into place…and I should point out that with me, nothing has to be perfect. I’m a “stuff it in there”, kinda guy. I made some little steps from Polystyrene…and cut a hole in the wall for the Garderobe, as you can see in the image above.
Making A Garderobe
For some reason, I thought this would be easy…and to be fair it was. My only regret was that I didn’t make it out of cardboard and stick balsa planks onto it. Instead, I chose to make it out of balsa and nearly broke it, a million times. You can see what I did in the photos below. Once I’d made the top and sides, glued them with superglue, I put some cardboard through the widows to help it to hold its shape whilst the glue dried. I positioned it over the hole I’d cut in the wall pinning it with cocktail sticks (toothpicks).
Next, I had to make a landing and some stairs up to it. Again, I had no idea how to do any of this so I was just winging it and learning on the go. One thing I have learned in life is… if you THINK you can do something, you can. Plus, I’m tenacious…and don’t like to give up on a project.
It’s not perfect. But in my mind, it fits with an improvised castle…more functional than aesthetic.
Ok, so the main build bits are largely done. I thought a bit of primer might be the next step. Actually, I was wrong. I should have built the wall bricks first and added the paster to the inside but hey…this was a learning journey, and I was totally winging it. I always prime outside in the garden as I’m sensitive to thinners.
The priming was a massive fail, the primer didn’t seem to like Polystyrene or the other way around. So I ended up painting the whole thing black with some cheap craft acrylic. The polystyrene texture was still very strong though, later I’d come up with a few solutions for that and if I’d had more time, I would have eliminated it completely.
The Exterior Walls
The walls were a worry for me and remain the worst aspect of the model in my opinion. They look OK, but the pattern of the polystyrene shows through in way too many places, despite me treating it liberally with Mod Podge and paint, plaster etc. At first, I had no clue how I was going to do the brickwork. I’d seen posts on social media showing people building vast buildings with little blue blocks. ] which looked awfully tedious. After researching around I thought “Look, it’s the only way, so get on with it”. And to be fair, it was very easy and quite therapeutic.
I didn’t have the blue foam that most diorama makers seem to have …Instead, I opted for Foam chips the ones that look like “cheesy wotsits / Cheetos” I cut them into shape and glued them in place using Modpodge. I used MP because it seemed to dry a lot faster than normal PVA.
Mortar
I had no idea how I was going to do the mortar…but came up with the idea that if I use Polyfiller mixed with sand, and then water it down, I could tilt the castle and pour the mortar all over the walls to create that “patched and patched again” look
I then painted the exterior walls black with a mix of hobby acrylic and Mod Podge to help hold it and prevent it from cracking. It created a bit of a glossy texture but I felt that added to its charm…as an old decaying castle wall might well look wet in places, especially if it’s covered in moss and such like.
Next, it was time to add the flock to create that mossy look. Ideally, I would have remembered to add colour to the various blocks and then do the dry brushing first…but to hell with convention.
Next came the interior walls which I did with plaster scraped across the wall and then scratched off in certain places. It looked rubbish but improved when I added some green and brown wash to look as though water had run down allowing the birth of mould and algae.
Then it was a bit of dry brushing on all the wood, just to make it look weathered. Again I added some green and brown washes just to make things look as though nature was overrunning the place.
Ornaments /decorations
Scenery bits and bobs
I’d had a good think about what I needed to embellish the scene, and I had a plan to buy some stuff and make the rest. Remember the list from earlier? Well, those bits needed actioning. I scoured the web for lots of inspiration, pictures of model walls, treasure, crows, gibbets, dead minis etc.
A heap of treasure.
Marcel from the Crown of Command Podcast Discord group, kindly sent me some treasure pieces that he 3d printed for me. The scale might have been a touch large upon reflection but actually, they really filled in the spaces well. He also sent some skeletons and some soldiers to be used as statues. I used a fair bit of what he sent me and the couple of bits I didn’t use will roll into the next big project I’m sure.
Some marauding adventurers want to steal the treasure.
I had a couple of figures that fitted the bill perfectly and then I bought a couple more to make a larger group. at the time of writing, I still don’t know if I’ll use them all. * In the end I settled for an attacking party of 4 but I madly forgot to add the Elf. Crazy, I know.
the attackers were a knight adventurer with a lamp. I’d painted him up and didn’t really love the cut of his gib. Rather than send him to the strip jar, I thought he would work OK as a background figure, placed coming out of the spiral staircase.
Next, I had a Barbarian attacking with an axe. I positioned him running down the small staircase, his pose really suits that position. Then I have a Dwarf with an axe. I don’t think they know what they are doing. They are all going to die screaming.
A spiral staircase
This consisted of a dowl rod. I then measured my stairwell which was just part of the polystyrene moulding and used a compass to draw a circle. I cut out a few circles out of the card, dividing the circles into 1/8ths. these would be my templates. Then I cut some tubes out of XPF foam and sliced the tubes. then I divided the slices into 8ths. These would be my steps. I began sticking the steps to the dowel pole, going around and around until I reached the desired height. I just then glued it in place. Initially, it looked totally crap. It certainly could have been done a lot better but, as i have said a few times, this was a learning curve. As I added a few other elements It started to look more realistic. I think it will do, anyway.
looks a bit naff like this but it kind a works in situ
An Oubliette with a skeleton and reeds
Making the Oubliette was simple because the void was already in the Polystyrene. All I had to do was paint the inside black, add a skeleton and make a suitable hatch. The hatch was made from the top off a plastic dispenser and the bars are just plastic rods from my local model shop, WD Models in Chesterfield. Later in the project, I added a hinge cut from small loops of plastic-card and threaded a metal pin through it. The reeds are simple just some long yellow grass by Javis.co.uk
Once painted the Oubliette Grate looks much more realistic. It’s perhaps a little larger than what I wanted but it looks OK, once It had had a couple of coats of Dirty down Rust effect..
Oubliette, made from soap dispenser and plasticard pipe
Adding some rust effect and dry brushing silver over the top makes this grate look more realistic
Some dead knights and people, a skeleton chained to the wall.
Next, I needed the dead. I tried to sculpt some but they weren’t that great. They were ok for certain semi-hidden places but as centrepiece minis, I needed something better. I was aware that Aaron Howdle had sculpted a load and flogged them to Heyland terrain. So I picked a few of their Fatal Fantasy miniatures… up to use as well as a couple of skeletons from Alternative Armies
Painting up the bits and bobs
Aaron Howdle
Aaron Howdle
DAS clay sculpt
sculping around a skull
DAS clay sculpt
Heraldic Pennants
I wanted to create either some heraldic pennants or shields, for a long time it was shields, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I really ran out of time on this project. Pennants I felt i could do.
First of all, I found an image of a pennant online and downloaded the template. I then went and searched for the family crests of 5 surnames in my family.
They are:
My Irish Side Geoghegan and Marsden.
My Jamaican side Phillips and Harvey
and the English Adoptive side, Gregory.
Once I’d managed to find the images…I overlaid the crests onto the pennant template in Photoshop and created a rough mockup of each one which I then downloaded and printed out.
That’s when I found out my printer had run out of coloured ink. No worries there was just enough of an outline for me to freehand paint the pennants. * I know they look a bit happhazzzard and scruffy, but it’s called Warhammer, not ParadeHammer. I like my figures to look as though they have real lives. Plus I really can’t paint super-cleanly to save my life.
Homage to the greats.
I wanted to tip my hat to the greats without doing it in a cringey or over-the-top. I settled upon creating a portrait of John Blanche and one of Brian Ansell. Brian Ansell lives at the real Stoke Hall, so I thought it might be fun to imagine his ancestor being someone important at STOWK hall. I’m not bad at freehand but a portrait painter, I am not, so how best to do this was my concern.
The paintings were done by grabbing some images of John Blanche and Brian Ansell, the blanch one was run through an Ai avatar generator. The Ansell one just got photoshopped. Once they were suitably tweaked I created the frames from thin XPF foam and scratched up the surface to make the filigree effect that you often see on old oil paintings, then 2 or 3 coats of gloss varnish…and scratched them up with a dentist tool.
I have a couple of photos of both John and Bryan, but neither was quite right for what I wanted here. I found an image of John and fed it into some AI program. Don’t ask me which, I don’t remember. I created 100 images of him in different scenarios. I chose one that looked suitable and then printed it out. I then painted a bit over the top and varnished it to make it look more realistic as a portrait. Once it had dried hard I scratched it with a sculpting tool to make it look past its best.
The frames were made from the same thin foam that I used for the flagstones and the patterning was done using a cocktail stick. I painted them dark brown and then dry-brushed them with copper and then gold.
Next I started on the dragon. i cant give you all the WIPS here because they don’t exist. there would be hundreds…but here’s a few.
Something I have learned from looking at many other dioramas is the thing that makes them pop is the myriad of little things that at first you don’t notice. So I wanted to add lots of those.
Gallows
@Marvellousminis from my insta kindly sent me some gallows and a Gibbet. When they arrived the Gibbet was perfect but the gallows were a wee bit too small. I considered not using them and scratch building a bigger one but I was running out of time and TBH I didn’t really relish building them, as all the other constructions such as a staircase etc had proved a bit tricky. In the end, I settled for customising them with superglue, a wooden ice cream spoon and some greenstuff and a jewellers chain. Not perfect but functional.
The Sewer
I had a plan to do more with this…but time and a simple mistake of not adding enough fall to the terrain meant I had to compromise. In the end, I simply hollowed out a hole…painted it black inside…glued down a load of small chippings, added foliage, then, I added a 3D-printed Resin mesma- toad that @ketiltrout sent me ages ago. The bars were simple green garden wire pushed up into the walls. I didn’t even glue them, just painted them black then coated in dirtydown rust effect and drybrushed them with silver.
Battlements
The battlements were, well, battered. So, in fact, they were pretty easy to do…I used balsa to create floorboards and platforms. Then I painted and added some skeletons, and discarded weaponry.
So this was pretty much the last parts of scenery. There was just so many little toches to attend to I wondered, several times if I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
This unfortunate chap starved to death after being forgotten about
Blocks and Flocks
Blocks and Flocks
shot of hand made parts to the castle
this shot depicts the garderobe platform. The curtain pole is just wire with green stuff blobs on the end, then painted gold and secured by small wire clips. The curtain is just folded paper, cut and scratched to look weathered. It was one of the most fiddly parts of the whole job.
this shot depicts the garderobe platform. The curtain pole is just wire with green stuff blobs on the end, then painted gold and secured by small wire clips.
The plaster is real plaster spread onto the wall with my finger to make it look rough. then weathered with watered down paint. the keys by the oubliette, are from an Oldschool Miniatures giant.
The plaster is real plaster spread onto the wall with my finger to make it look rough. then weathered with watered down paint. the keys by the oubliette, are from an Oldschool Miniatures giant.
Right then that is pretty much all the step by steps. The overall quality of this model wasn’t quite what I was hoping, but overall, I feel the sheer volume and variety of the components helped its credibility. Regardless, I feel pretty happy with it because it really was the first diorama that I’ve made since I was about 15.
I hope you enjoyed reading the process and looking at the photos.
If you did, please leave a like and a comment and maybe share the link on social media. That would help me to keep going and make more models for our shared enjoyment.
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