Scenery project: Art Gallery
With Bolt Action having taken off in my local gaming group in Halle, we figured we’d need some scenery to fight over. Some ruins of buildings are often the most evocative kind of scenery you can imagine, and so I sat down last week and built one. Not just any ruin though – I really wanted to go to town (pun unintended) on a challenging piece. Here then, dear readers, I present you the fruit of my labour.
The front of the house, with the gallery’s sign bearing my girlfriend’s name – she’s an art historian!
The walls were built out of foamcore – the stuff that architects use to create their mock-ups. I found it relatively cheaply at a local scale modeling store, and it’s really the best material to make decent buildings out of. That brick texture was made by pressing a ballpoint pen into the thin card layer, which is simple but also immensely tedious work.
The creeper plant on this corner is poison ivy by Mininature.
Doors and windows were cut out with an x-acto knife, taking measurements roughly in keeping with the size of the models and their bases. Once all the basic shapes were done, I glued them onto a plasticard base with a liberal application of PVA.
I decided I’d done enough bricks, so I cut some corners on this wall.
The floor, doors, window panes, roof tiles etc. were all made from cardboard, kindly donated by some of my Warlord boxes! Other materials used were bits of plaster that were left over from another scenery project, barbecue sticks (don’t know how they’re called in English) and good old styrofoam.
Plenty of forward-looking windows, but a terrible lack of cover from the back.
Of course, with it being an art gallery, the interior is the focal point of this building. I had my girlfriend pick some paintings that are no older than the Napoleonic age – as I’d like to be able to use it for that era of wargaming as well – then downsized them and printed them out. Then they were stuck onto thin cardboard, provided with a gold trim aka poor man’s frame, and stuck onto the walls.
The table is a simple piece of cardboard provided with four lengths of barbecue stick.
One thing I am going to add before calling it completely finished is to add a makeshift ladder so that the top floor can actually be reached. Other than that, it’s on to another piece of scenery!
Looks awesome. The paintings inside are a nice touch and really add a lot. Instead of a ball pen you can also use the metal part of an old brush without hair, form it into a brick shape with pliers and then use it like a stamp. It is faster than doing it with a pen. However, awesome work and I am sure playing in and around it will be tons of fun. How many hours did it take you from start to finish?
Ha! Awesome tip for that ‘brick stamp’. I didn’t exactly count the hours I spent on this building, but I think it’ll run close to six or seven. Thanks for your comment!
Very neat
Great idea and superbly executed. Lovely results.
Great results, how long didi it take? Have you made any others in this way?