The Painting Bunkerc y

So, four down now, four to go!  Half way mark, and oh boy am I feeling it…  It’s been a big job thus far.  This is the last of the two Concourse Sectors that I brought way back on 12 December 2012… It’s a little bit shocking for me to think that about two months ago these bad boys rocked up on my door step.  It’s been a bit of an obsession for me over the summer.

So far the boards that I’ve completed I’ve been very happy with, and this one is no exception.  This one is meant to be a Chaplaincy and some form of accommodation for the attendants of the Cathedral.  So I’ll let the pictures do the talking and make a few comments on each of the pictures to guide you through what I was thinking at the time, and as usual you can get more of an idea about the process from flicking through the working photos gallery at the bottom of this post.

I really wanted the larger of the two buildings, the accommodation block, to have a very distinctive feature so I went back through a few photos of cathedrals etc and found that certain types of places of worship have domes on top, so I thought it’d look cool.  I also made the roof line overhand the building facade, sort of like an eve.  I did this to help break up the shape of the building (a rectangle) and to allow the addition of the buttresses (pic below)  I didn’t want the roof to have a barrier on it, like all the other buildings featured, however I did feel it needed something, so I added a small hand rail with the eagle heads as the posts.  I think it makes an interesting look and I’m very happy with how it turned out.  For those that are interested the dome is a toy soccer ball.  I chose it because it was 1.  The right size, 2.  It had and interesting diamond pattern over its surface as opposed to being just smooth, and 3. It didn’t have any other features embossed on it, like a manufactures mark, random shapes or whatever.

You can see what it looked like before I painted it in the working photos gallery at the bottom.  I’ve still got the other half, so perhaps It’ll feature in some other piece of scenery on anther board (yes, I’m already planning another board when I finished with this one….)

As with other multi story buildings I’ve made, this one is also broken up into its various floors to make gaming with it easier…. If you look closely you can see small posts.  These are in each corner and key into the upper floor to make the building more stable when assembled.  

One thing that I am really pleased with so far, but sadly you can not see, is the way the boards and buildings interrelate to one another.  The boards when all put together really are starting to look like a small city block, the different heights of the buildings, the features which distinguish them, the story they tell and the “conversations” they have with one another through the narrative I’m trying to create all enhance the effect and produce a result that is greater than the sum of its parts.

With just two more boards to do to give me a 6′ x 4′ playing surface so that a proper game can be played on them, I’m starting to get very excited and can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I have to admit though, I am now starting to want to paint some actual minis, however I’m just going to have to wait until I get the last few boards done.  I anticipate the pace of my updates is going to somewhat slow down come next week as my studies commence and it’ll be nose to the grind stone.  But we’ll see what happens.

Thats if for now, thanks for dropping in

John