"Painting the town..." Topic

Salutations, gentlefolk !

Been making some scrap cardboard into a village/town/built-up-area for Gauls/Early Germans/Celts/Dacians to fight for – wattle-and-daub huts with timber frames and thatched roofs.

Wondering if 'twould be correct to paint them as if painted or whitewashed, or if historically correct buildings of this era must have only weathered timbers and dried clay walls ?

If you can point me to any historical or archaeological sources on this, online or in the library, my thanks.

(Will put photos of the finished project, whenever that is)

"Many roundhouses were then whitewashed with lime" – link

link shows whitewashed Dacian houses, but I'm not sure what the evidence for it is.

I would think it's a safe bet to either choose the white/grey palette for lime-based whitewash, or else earthy colours based on ochre, umber and burnt umber. I'm painting for a late medieval/fantasy setting, but the ochre/umber palette works for me. You can see it here:
TMP link

I'm curious, what method did you choose for the thatched roofs? I ended up going with slates/shingles if only to avoid the horrors of simulating thatching. Do you have a good solution that works in 25/28mm?

..since they were "rude huts" I suggest some lurid graffiti….. :-)

Salutations, Mr. Wheldrake !

Am very impressed with your modelling skills!

My village be for 15's, with no interiors and windows just small rectangles of wall painted flat black.

There are some 'print-and-assemble' buildings at Wargame Vault, and some 'thatch' graphics at
textures.com
(IMHO, everyone on TheMiniaturesPage oughta at least take a look at that, see what's there.)

Am going to try some 'impressionist' roof painting in imitation of these, if that don't look good, may adjust the figure size of what I downloaded from textures.com and print that out for the roof. But not tonight ;-)

Thanks for the advice, everyone (But if you had built it for your family, you'd think 'twas The Best Goldurned Thatched Hut In The Village…)

I know nothing of the specifics of this topic but don't forget that much of the ancient world was painted in bright colors, remaining pigments and some actual painted surfaces remain to attest to this. Extrapolating from that suggests that, a pigment source being available, colorful decorations are always possible.

Chokidar – in the case of the Celtic ones, you'd need to rely of pictures, since only the druids were literate, and they'd be using Greek script, which I bet nobody would be prepared to put in a Celtic village.

Salutations again !

Was going thru fourteen pages of Goog results (hint: "history of whitewash paint" avoids most – though not all – of contemporary controversies)

Concluded that if ye Celts had mastered using lime as subsitute for hair gel, they probably had figured out whitewash, and found that you can mix whitewash with blood (they _said_ 'animal blood') to get 'Suffolk Pink', a tone suitable for the room of a very young lady…

Am imagining my barbarian village, with the mud-plaster walls in that shade…

On the other hand, us oldtimers who grew up on 60's vintage Avalon Hill games might assume froufrou pink was an appropriate color for the Early German warbands…