"15mm houses for the early 16th C, Italian Wars" Topic

I am gradually building a French army under FoG-R for the Italian Wars and putting together some scenery to go with it. I finished this group of village houses a few weeks ago but have just got round to photographing it.

They are scratch built out of thick picture mounting card with small rectangles of card stuck on to represent stone blocks and break up the surface. I painted the stonework areas with a mix of PVA and filler to give some more texture and blend it all together. The pantile roof is a plastic moulding from Wills.

I painted them with a mix of relatively cheap acrylic craft paints and Vallejo.

Since they are for FoG-R and it is only the area of the terrain feature that matters, I made an area marker using the rubber backing off an old carpet tile, textured with decorator's caulk, PVA glue and sand and then painted with my usual figure basing colours (starting with a very rough approximation of Humbrol dark earth as colour matched by Dulux as an emulsion).

I plan to make a few more buildings – a barn, maybe a small church and some of the mixed clutter of village/farm life like a water trough, a cart, some chickens…

There is a more detailed description on my blog.

smallitalianwars.blogspot.co.uk

Wow – those are really gorgeous! Great job!

Impressive work!

Oooh! Those are lovely!!

gorgeous! Those can be used for more than just the 16th Century.

Where did you get the tile roofing material? What are "Wills pantiles"?

Lovely work.
Wills make a variety of embossed plastic card sheets, including pantiles auction Various sizes are available.

Noch also do some. link
Theirs are self-adhesive and I seem to remember are not polystyrene but something a bit softer and flexible.

These look great!

Very nicely done. I'm creating similar for Spain.

Very nice, and the base really enhances the appearance.

Fantastic!!! I would have to pay good money to have scenery like that since my DIY skills are lacking.

Thanks very much for the comments.

The pantiles plastic sheet for the roof is Wills – the one Swampster provided a link to. They are supposed to be 1:76 scale so are rather oversize here but the general effect is OK. Strictly, I believe the roof tiles should be mission or barrel tiles – the semi-cylindrical type laid alternately concave and convex side up but I couldn't find any of those although the Noch tiles which Swapster posted may be those – it is hard to tell anyway at such a small scale.

The roof ridges are bamboo kebab skewers sanded to give the V-profile to they fit in the notch and then cross-cut with a razor saw.

I painted them with Sandtex textured masonry paint in terracotta then painted random individual half-tiles (either the valley or the ridge) in browns and greens to break things up. When that was really dry, I have each panel a wash of dark brown then (again when it was really dry) dry brushed with progressively lightened shades of the original terracotta.

These are very nice. Inspirational

John

The pantiles plastic sheet for the roof is Wills – the one Swampster provided a link to. They are supposed to be 1:76 scale so are rather oversize here but the general effect is OK. Strictly, I believe the roof tiles should be mission or barrel tiles – the semi-cylindrical type laid alternately concave and convex side up but I couldn't find any of those although the Noch tiles which Swapster posted may be those – it is hard to tell anyway at such a small scale.

Thank you Midlander65 and Swampser. It is too bad that no one does the alternately tiles. Far more common until recently. I agree that the tiles look great, even oversized. I'm looking for roof tiles for Spanish Civil War buildings.

I think the Noch tiles may be meant to represent barrel tiles. I found a bigger picture here

link which doesn't show any hint of the flat part of the pantiles I used. Only thing is they are N-scale 1:160 so only 2/3 size for 15mm.

How did you get the stucco texture effect between the individual stone blocks? That looks really nice.

Noch also do two sizes of tiles for OO/HO. I think I must have used the smaller of these for a Roman building as I discovered some unused N scale tiles and they are smaller.

The rough effect over all the stonework areas is a slightly dilute mix of woodworking PVA and ready mixed filler, painted on then stippled with a cheap nylon brush.

I wish I had known about the larger scale Noch tiles before making these. Maybe a better option than the Wills ones which I used. I don't think I'll be re-roofing though.

What is "ready mixed filler"? Wood filler?

The filler I used was Superdec flexible wood filler, chosen on the basis of being the cheapest option in my local DIY shop. I have used Tetrion in the past with similar results. I suppose any slightly gritty, water soluble filler would be OK. I use the same stuff when basing figures.

That may well be the finest 15 mm scratch built building I've ever seen. I expect, if it hasn't happened yet, you will be approached to build masters to create buildings for sale – or someone might copy your work. My first question with that first image was who makes these so I can buy some. Excellent work and look forward to seeing more of what you do.

Those are fantastic!!!

" Maybe a better option than the Wills ones which I used. I don't think I'll be re-roofing though."

And nor should you. It looks fine as it is.

It looks fine as it is

For sure. I thought they were commercially produced resin cast when I saw the first picture :)

John