It’s going to be something…

As mentioned before the basic bulk painting for my painting method is fast and easy.  I use a cheap throw-away brush from the local hardware store, normally a 1″ brush and household paint that’s been colour-matched to miniature paint.

After that, I go in with a cheap flat bristled craft paintbrush and pick out individual flagstones with my selections of greys.  For some, I leave the dry brushed colours showing.

I do these in bulk so that by the time I get through them, the first ones are well and truly dry. Then I add some wash over them in black and brown, wiping most of the wash back off with a paper towel. Again, I do this in bulk, so I don’t have to stop the production line I set myself.

Finally, I once again use some of the lighter grey colours to roughly highlight a few of the flagstones.

I keep these deliberately rough and quick because I like the colours to merge.  After all, this is a backdrop really for the miniatures which will go on the table.

This is a really fast way for me to get these done.  I can stick a movie on, or in this case, catch up with some stuff on YouTube and just knock them all out.

The walls, I have already covered in my Gaslight project, so I won’t go into detail here, suffice to say the brickwork consists of 3 colours and 2 of those are undercoats from rattle cans.

A little stock-take on where I am up to.

I have a fair bit of painting done, still lots to do and still lots more that my mechanical helpers and churning out for this.

The cobblestone roads will change as I am not happy with how they look at the moment.

I have heaps more to do, thankfully with my work I have been lucky in getting a block of days off all in a row.   A new job is on the horizon though, so I have to make hay whilst the sun shines.

A really quick tutorial on my sewers.  Call this part one if you like.

I’ll come back and do the woodwork and weathering in a later post.

You can now put those aside whilst doing the next batch.  After the next batch is done, this lot will be dry enough to paint in the woodwork and use some inks to add some stains and the like.

Of course, up until now, I have only really been comparing the colour scheme with the board to my Victorian Gaslight buildings but that is only a part of the plan for this table.

I needed to make sure it would also look okay with my fantasy-styled buildings.

My fantasy buildings have a smaller footprint so I can get a few more of them onto the table.   I switched out the Gothic-looking towers for something more fantasy, they are only partially painted so far.  Removed the streetlights as I have other plans for the lighting for the fantasy set up and took a few quick pictures.

I still need to redo the cobblestones and do a lot more base tiles before I can start looking at the details.

I few little bits that have been bugging me.   The curb pieces need to change colour so they look different to the flagstones.   Also, the curb pieces over the bridges need painting.  The road still needs changing.

Some quick comparison shots with

55mm Gothic Horror Figures

32mm or whatever scale Games Workshop figures are

28mm Scale Victorian Science fiction.

I decided that I should make a few extra pieces so that I can rearrange the layout in different ways. This would also mean I can expand to a full 4′ x 6′ layout and have enough room to fit my Victorian Science Fiction Airport onto the board (once I actually finish that building, that is) and also increase the ‘slums area’, which I still have to make.

This would also mean I could add some more Fantasy style buildings to my collection in the future.  It would be nice to add a tavern and wizards tower of some sort down the line.

I also found a little time to do some general tweaks here and there and fix up a few bits that were not quite sitting right for me.   At the moment the board is all ‘unclipped’.  Once I insert the clips it pulls the whole thing together and closes all the gaps.   Once I have got all the individual tiles to the same level, I can give them some weathering to help tie them all together and then start clipping them together so I can start making some progress on all the extra bits to go with it.

I quickly painted up the tower tops using a mix of black, brown and grey paints and a kid’s craft brush.  I kind of wet-brushed it over and mixed it up on the model with my finger to create a weather and worn look.  I like my terrain to look a bit rustic.

For the lighting, I have two ideas in mind.  One for the fantasy setting and one for the Victorian setting.

I used 3D-printed elements with a 3v yellow flicker bulb to create a plug that can fit into the collum and sewer walls.  I then went onto a 3D building program and quickly designed some plugs that I could use to replace the lights and that would also match the aesthetic of the table.

These plugs can then be easily interchanged depending on whether I want lights or not.

The simple decoration without the light still needs to be painted of course.

The batteries can be replaced by removing the columns and pushing them out via a hole in the back.

I also added lights, to the Gothic statues, which are also removable.

Because the lights are all removable I can also change the colour of the lights easily, so it’s possible to have an eerie green glow if I choose, or in fact almost any other colour.