Barn-raising

Warburton Terrain, Warhammer, , , ,
Barn Finished 1
Fantasy Barn – inspired by Phil Lewis and Tony Harwood’s efforts

Yes, I am alive. Due to various factors, the most I have been able to motivate myself for these last 5 months has been the occasional comment on the blogs of others; sometimes not even that. However, this is not the time nor the place to discuss those issues. Suffice to say, I am back.

Barn Finished 2
The other side….

Across the Christmas period, I constructed a Fantasy Barn. I chose this project because I thought it would be relatively easy, and a good way to lay down some skills for some more ambitious projects in the future. Also, I have started to paint some Warhammer (5th edition style, of course) miniatures, and so I need a suitable photographic backdrop!

Barn Finished 3
… and the back.

The barn structure was based on the templates from the old White Dwarf article by Phil Lewis.

Phil Lewis Fantasy Barn
The classic article which provided the model for this project, and the templates.

I blew them up to A3 size on a photocopier and used them to cut card-board profiles to build up the basic shape of the building. This is a technique I learned from Tony Harwood‘s excellent books.

Barn WIP 1
Cardboard profiles making up the basic structure – this is fairly strong, but heavy compared to most other terrain.

I then covered the structure in papier-mâché – a technique I have not used since I was about 5 years old(!), but which also came from Tony Harwood’s book.

Barn WIP 2
That is the lovely face of female Melbourne Cup winning jockey, Michelle Payne (who won me a goodly sum of cash).

I then clad the structure in balsa wood planks  and tiled the roof with cardboard tiles.

Barn WIP 3
I learned a lot from this project, and (apart from the door which looks a bit shit) I am pretty happy with it.

All in all it was pretty simple and turned out ok, I think. It took 2 evenings to build and about 1.5 hours to paint.

Tony Harwood Barn
This work by Tony Harwood (photo used with permission) was also studied very closely for inspiration. Taken from Dampfpanzerwagon Guide No. 1 Building Wargame Terrain By Tony Harwood, published by the author (2013) page 96.

17 thoughts on “Barn-raising”

    • Thanks, Terry! 🙂
      It was not hard, to be honest, though as I went through the process I certainly came across many ways to improve the next project. Which as this was a learning process, was the idea! But overall I learned some stuff, and got a useful piece of terrain out of it too 😉

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  3. That worked out nicely. Going for a more dense block rather than box structure is interesting.

    I hope that you make a few more buildings in that style, I can imagine a nice little farm or hamlet made that way.

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    • Thanks, Cheetor 🙂
      I plan to make at least 2 more buildings, possibly some other farm type stuff (like a pig-sty or something similar), and some European-style woods across the next 6 months…. I want to end up with a terrain set-up and photo-backdrop reminiscent of the 1990s White Dwarf photographs…. Hopefully that is a modest enough project that it will actually happen… along with painting some “Red-Era” Warhammer figures too! And I will also keeping up slow and steady on the Classic 40K stuff… Phew!

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