Scenic Tokens for Sharp Practice

I like my gaming tokens to match the units. Shiny pieces of plastic are all well and good but I do find that they rather spoil the look of a good table. So I made these Present!, Uncontrolled and Reload! tokens for Sharp Practice.

They are simply Charlie Foxtrot mdf bases (40mm x 20mm) on to which I've glued the printed words. I've roughly torn the edges of the paper as I thought an irregular edge would look better.

Next, just apply your usual basing methods.

Here, it's sand and grit painted with Americana Honey Brown followed by highlights of VMC Dark Sand (847) then Foundry Boneyard light. Then out comes the box of grass and foliage, etc.

First Painted Figures for Sharp Practice

The Redcoats are marching to war!

Yes, I've pulled my finger out and painted some figures for Sharp Practice. Award winners they ain't, because I've made the conscious decision to paint them up "fairly quickly". As long as they look good at three feet then that's good enough for me. One of the big stumbling blocks for me back in my "Napoleonic days" was getting to caught up with the details on each individual figure which slowed painting to a crawl. Plus it just made things hard work.

Here's the painting recipe if you're interested. I started with a light-to-mid grey primer. The flesh is Foundry Flesh mid, the red is Foundry Bright Red shade, the musket is GW Scorched Brown. Next, give these areas a wash of slightly thinned Agrax Earthshade wash. When that's dry highlight the flesh with the mid and light colours from the triad. The red gets the base colour again, leaving some shaded areas. The musket is highlighted with Foundry Conker Brown shade. Here's the result so far.

The white areas, trousers, waistcoat, straps, etc are the key to getting these looking right so a bit of layering is worth the effort I reckon. A grey primer helps here as the next layer is Foundry Slate Grey light, but try to leave a little of the primer showing.

Next comes Foundry Austrian Grey mid. I don't worry too much about any splodges of paint that escape the edges (particularly the straps) as I'll tidy it all up with black later.

And finally the white.

The only bits left still to paint (hat, boots, ammo pouch, etc) are now covered in GW Black followed by highlights of Foundry Charcoal mid. The cuffs and lapels get a few dots of white for the lacing. Give the edge of the hat a little white too. The barrel and bayonet are painted with GW Leadbelcher.

The result is little untidy in places but I'm happy with them. Three groups of eight all ranked up on the table will look good I think.

The bases are UK 1p as they'll go in Charlie Foxtrot movement trays. They've been given a coat of fine sand then painted with Americana Honey Brown, VMC 847 Dark Sand then Foundry Boneyard light. I'll add some static grass, etc at a later point, probably when I do the trays.

Spanish Church and Grain Store (Charlie Foxtrot Models)

These Charlie Foxtrot Pantile models are, in my humble opinion, truly superb scenery kits and really evoke the feel of a Peninsular battlefield.

A while back chum Paul showed me some lovely Grand Manner resin buildings suitable for the Napoleonic Peninsular era. As I love painting scenery (and Paul's not so keen) I offered to paint them for him. He was so pleased with the result that he asked me if I'd also do a couple of Colin's kits for him :-D  They're such lovely buildings, how could I say no? I thought I'd share the fun in a blog article. I hope you find it interesting. Before I get started here's a few more pics of the completed models.

The Church. Astonishingly similar to the one featured in Sharpe's Rifles ... ;o)

The Grain Store.

I've blogged several times about building MDF kits so I'll skip that part. Here they are built and ready to go! Note the superb resin roof sections - the casting was pretty much perfect.

One point worth noting about the church kit is that the bell needs to attached during the build - you cannot easily add the supporting post after building the top section. So... I painted the bell first. Black undercoat, followed by a heavy dry-brush of GW Tin Bitz (any dark Bronze/Copper would do) then a very light dry-brush of a GW Gehenna's Gold.

The next step is to give the buildings a good base texture using some general purpose filler. You might need to add a tiny bit of water. I applied this liberally using my finger. The aim is a rough, irregular look. Also, I added few bricks using some rectangles of thin card just to hint at the bricks and blocks that would be used for buildings like this. Keep the filler away from the finer laser-etched brickwork around the doors etc.

Next, a finer layer of texturing is added using fine texture masonry paint. It's light brown so you can easily see where I've applied it. This is also used to texture the brickwork around the doors.

The last bit of texturing is done using some basing sand. Add a few patches here and there. Don't forget to texture the gable ends of the resin roof too.

You may to want use a little bit of masonry paint to blend the edges of the sand, it's up to you, but I thought it gave a better looking result.

For the Grain Store kit I decided to only use the masonry paint for texture as the lines in the stonework are quite fine. The kit also includes some resin 'mushrooms' that the building sits atop. These were glued together using Araldite.

Here are the paints I'll be using for this project.
* GW Primer Spray
* Americana Honey Brown
* Americana Fawn
* VMC 847 Dark Sand
* Foundry Boneyard Light 9C

Give the buildings a good coat of Honey Brown followed by a heavy dry-brush of Fawn.

Next, highlight with the Dark Sand (if you can find a suitable alternative in a tester pot from your DIY store then that will save you a bit of money). In the pic below I've only highlighted the upper floor of the church so you can more easily see the contrast.

On to the final highlight, Boneyard light. Again the pic shows just the upper floor for contrast.

Here's the grain store following the same recipe.

Here's the base for the grain store. The mushroom discs have yet to be glued in place. Everything has been textured and painted as described before. The base is painted using Honey Brown, then Harvest Field tester and finally Beach Resort tester (from B&Q).

After looking at the church in daylight I decided to add a few darker areas using GW Agrax Earthshade wash.

Whilst I was pleased with the result of the wash, I felt it needed blending in a bit. So I used Dark Sand and then Boneyard light to feather the edges of the washed areas.

The various items of woodwork, doors, etc were painted as follows. Prime with GW Black Spray, tidy up with GW Black paint then Americana Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate and Honey Brown. Pick out the metal details with black.

The grain store base needs a little decoration. The flock is Colonel Bill's Late Summer static grass, this has a slightly dried out look so it's ideal for arid bases. Add a few light brown tufts and a bit of clump foliage. It's worth taking the time to pick out any larger rocks and stones in Foundry Boneyard light or even pure white.

The roof sections are next. Prime the surface with your favourite light coloured primer then apply a couple of coats of terracotta. Here I've used Dulux tester pot mix "Sumatran Melody 2" very kindly given to me by Colin :o)

Next, apply a wash of thinned GW Agrax Earthshade and allow to dry completely. Give the roof a good dry-brush of the original base colour followed by another highlight of a very light terracotta. I used Dulux "Sumatran Melody 3".

Here are the completed models! I'm really pleased with them, and more importantly, so is Paul.

The full collection including the small resin house and resin windmill, both from Grand Manner.

I'm looking forward to many hours of happy gaming with Paul and friends using this scenery.