Gardeners' World?

As my regular reader will know only to well, I am concentrating for the present on my 'multi-period' Northern European town, which I've named Peendeforde, for obvious reasons really. As Sue has been at the local University all week I've made some guilt free progress. Today I finished colour washing the town square and the groundwork and also set about adding static grass, tufts and flower clumps to the smaller bases housing the church and graveyard. I thought a few pictures were in order ~

This is the general view from the side of the coaching inn. The groundwork has been washed in a cheap artists' acrylic, 'Country Maple', and the stonework of the town square and the church pathway in 'Agrax Earth', from 'you know where'! The stonework will stand a lighter drybrushing I think when its completely hard, probably Foundry 'Butternut Light'.

This is the view across the table towards the main gateway in the walled section of the town. I left the opposite side of the town open rather than walling the whole, it can simply be turned that way round if you want to signify a more modern look, say for 1914-18 or 1939-45 games. The square shines because the third coat of the wash was n't dry when I took the picture. Its completely matt now it has dried, I checked!

I took this to better show the layout of the whole town with the church and graveyard in place. Because they are separately based the 'look' can be altered by swithiching them around in different ways.

I like the way the church turned out. Most painted examples I found on other blogs seemed to have slate roofs, but I chose to suggest fired clay tiles in order to match the roof of the stable block and the pantiles on the three houses. Painting the individual stones over a brown spray undercoat was time consuming, but strangely therapeutic too. I think it blends the church in with the building behind quite well.

The graveyard of all my hopes? Well, not really of course! The stones are from Ainsty. I modelled the slight mounds and the open grave cut with Miliput and then textured over it with the fine Buff Ballast I mentioned in an earlier post. As I think less is more in the creation of vegetation, I was careful to leave largish areas uncovered with static grass and to deploy the tufts and flower clumps carefully. Those against the wall and the church signify weeds, so are white or yellow. I used a red clump for flowers on one grave for a dash of different colour.
I hope to be able to add the static grass, tufts and some colourful flower clumps to the main town tomorrow. It will be more of a challenge due to the size and weight of the town piece, but I think it can be done safely in several small stages. I may leave the area between the two houses as a garden and get some more suitable pieces to model that feature at Claymore in August. I hope that fellow gamers think I've done OK so far, I'm not much of a modeller really, but the venerable Hovels buildings are a joy to paint and so reasonably priced too!