Terrain as an artform?

I wouldn't have thought it possible but after viewing the pages of one Thomas Doyle I am stunned! His skills and imagination is unsurpassed by anything I've ever seen. Very impressive.
Here's a sample and I really recommend you all drop by his homepage to see the many other artworks exhibited there.

Camouflaged Turn Marker

China marches its men down Baideng Road
While Tartar troops peer across blue waters of the bay.
And since not one battle famous in history
Sent all its fighters back again,
The soldiers turn round, looking toward the border,
And think of home, with wistful eyes.
- Li Bai

Hello all!
Well as I wrote in my last post I love ebay - it's an amazing place for bargains and strange things one must own. One of my less successful purchases was ten 10mm civilians (they were alright) which I'll probably stick on two bases to make some peasant units. The lot also came with a celtic village house which looked alright but once it arrived I quickly realised that it was much too large to use with my normal terrain. I use 6mm houses as I like the way they look on the battleground the most and this house was somewhere closer to 20mm than 10mm. So it has been hiding in my piles of junk for a while until yesterday when it finally dawned on me what I could use it for! A turn marker!
I always hate having a dice mark the turns - its ugly and someone always picks it up at some point in each game (often myself :-)) so I wanted a turn marker that would fit the battlefield and not be removed by accident.

This is the house where I've cut out a small part in front of the door.
Mounted the house on the lid of an old Army Painter flock container.
The brilliant (.-)) turn system - I drilled a hole in the middle and stuck an upholstery nail in it, allowing the house to turn but the rest remains stabile. (and damn resin stinks when heated.... nasty stuff).

The finished peaces - house and lid painted and flocked and the black and white piece is the turnmarker itself - sans numbers (which my wonderful wife did as she is vastly better at all things pretty than myself).
And the finished result itself - The base is quite heavy and stabil while the house turns with ease and marks which turn we've arrived at - in this case its turn 5.
All in all I'm pretty pleased with this one - took under an hour (excluding drying time) and was fun especially as I had been a bit displeased with the house.
Now if only I could get a game with someone and try it out...
Best regards,
Kasper.

The Trees of Ebay

There are sobs when death is the cause of parting;
But life has its partings again and again.
You came to me through the green of a forest,
You disappeared by a shadowy fortress.
-Du Fu

I just love ebay.
I found these bags of trees from a chinese manufactor which are near perfect for terrain in 6mm and 10mm. There are two different shapes and each bag cost 0,99£ - and thats 150 trees for under 2 pounds. Amazing.
They might be just a little bit too bright to use with Noch's trees but on their own they look very nice indeed and their branches are bendable so they can look as you want them to.
Only negative thing is living in Denmark the shipping is always a bit more than everywhere else so the porto was 4£ - twice the cost of the trees themselves...

The trees (with a bottle of Vallejo as comparison):



Best regards,
K.

The Lost Island

Dinosaurs are fun:
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Did you find him?
Roland Tembo: Just the parts they didn't like.

After the recent fun had with painting a dino which my son found - he was thrilled when the dentist gave him a small new one shortly thereafter. He wanted it painted at once so we had some fun finding the right colours and discussing how to paint it. Again this is a five minutes paintjob - amazing quality of these cheap plastic buggers once the ink hits their flesh.
The before picture:


And the after (book your very own "beauty-make-over" at Salon Kasper!)


No rockets this time - sorry :-).

Pigs in the pen go oink, oink, oink

Hello all!
Well I managed to get some more "me"-time and as has been the case recently I used it for making some more terrain, instead of painting minis. Don't know why but I just feel more like terragenesissing than painting yet another unit of 10mm infantry.
The result was two of the smaller bases worth of farms (which we play as giving infantry the defended bonus but is open to all troop types and with full visibility) that can go into my "modular" bases, for greater diversity.
The first is a windmill and a small hanged man (child?) from Irregular Miniatures with a tree from Games Workshop (bought on ebay at 0.99£ for three). The peaceful grassy hill is being chewed on by three goats made by some forgotten railway company.
Looks great in my opinion :-).




The next one is a small wineyard - the house is from Baccus6mm, the tree is from Noch while the pigpen and winestalks are from Irregular Miniatures.



Hope you enjoy them - they were fun to build/paint - now if only I could get some gaming done...
K.

The Dark Forest

Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead
Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown was bred
Anything more bright.

And evermore mighty multitudes ride
About, nor enter in;
Of the other multitudes that dwell inside
Never yet was one seen.

(--E. Thomas)

The last stands of forest terrain are done - not with any amount of detail (there are a few roads and thats it apart froms tones and hills) but I'll go back and add some ruins and the like later on. Two more with mainly decidous trees from Noch:

And seven stands of dark deep spruce forest. Three large bases and four smaller ones - all to go inside the modules so they'll give various sizes of forest and yet alow any troops to enter if they so wishes. I have managed to forget who made the spruces - but they were bought in a huge bag of 50 or 75 of them and look alright from afar. Close up they are not that detailed :-/.

Lost worlds

It seems this scary dino attacked a small patrol of spearmen but luckily they managed to drive it back to the lost world where it belongs...


Actually it was found on the street by my oldest son (five) who gave it to me - and was happy about it being repainted (shading and some white on the scales) although he refuses to believe that the scales on its back are not rockets ...
As for its uses, well there are none but it was a fun five minutes :-)

Siege Equipment part II

As promised in honour of the first comment on this (new) blog here are a couple of pictures with the siege equipment from Irregular Miniatures line of 6mm stuff. As it is cheap and well sculpted I choose that line and 6mm even though my minis are 10mm as it wont be many sieges I get to fight and as the larger stuff seems a bit overdimensioned.
But anyway; with Games Workshop infantry (ca. 9mm) and Kallistra infantry (ca. 12mm):

Especially the ram seems small but not to any infuriatingly way and I'm still happy with them.
best regards,
Kasper

More terrain; forests

Greetings! I managed to finish three sets of forest stands in between my Ph.D and painting our new apartments (as well as the kids demanding far too much time .-)). These are mounted on 11,5x11,5 pieces of hard cardboard which in hindsight was a mistake but I have run out of thin mdf and wanted to work on them. They've warped slightly from the glue and clay used to give them some contours but not enough to be a problem.




These flowery trees might be a bit too bright but they do give the battlefield some colour which works well.
Below they are shown inserted in one of my modular borderbases from which they can be lifted out when troops wishes to occupy the forest area.
The hanged man and gate are from Irregular Miniatures, hedges from Heki and the trees are the, in my mind, perfect ones from Noch (decidous and spring).

Siege Equipment

Hello all! well in preparation for our (hopefully) forthcoming try at a siege using the rules in Warmaster I've completed a siege tower and a battering ram. Both are 6mm and from Irregular Miniatures and while a bit small for our 10mm they are dirt cheap and very well sculpted. The only problem was the siege tower which had fairly irritating sculptlines running down each side, ruining the sides a wee bit. Otherwise they are yet another example of the quality of Irregular Miniatures and the total cost is somewhere below 3£ which is unbeatable :-). The siege tower is mounted on a 30x40 base being just a bit too wide to fit on my normal 20x40 bases.

Warmaster Terrain

Another try - this time a page full of my terrain pieces:


On the workbench at the moment; another farm - wine stalks and pigpen from Irregular while the house is from Baccus.

Finished old and mysterious standing stones in the forest - or something :-). "Mystic Stones" from JR Miniature terrain ("god damn it Alexis i want that pipeline.....").


Examples of my new modular village concept. Three sizes of bases will be put into different modules (see below) making a wide variety of possible village configurations. Here are a celtic village (small and medium size), a mill with buildings (medium) and a medium village with a church. Next to the sheep is a small sheepdog (almost impossible to spot) which is from a set of farm animals made by Noch (theres also a cat somewhere - kudos tot he one who manages to spot it :-)).
The Celtic village is from Mainly Military (Not Baccus as I thought previously) as are some of the other buildings and church while the farm things are from Irregualr miniatures (the sheep, cows, cornsstalks and the hanged man below). The hedges are Heki while most of the trees are from Noch (decidous). The fir trees are from a huge bag bought somewhere on the web but I've forgotten the brand - they are of ok quality but pale in comparison with Noch.

One of the first "modules" for my villages. The size makes it possible to have a small and medium village/farm inside the walls or hedges and when troops arrive they can be removed for ease. Makes the possible configurations endless (almost .-)).


A couple of Impassable rock-stands.


The gate, one of the towers and a breached section of my quickly built fortress.

Broer / bridges - resin made by JR Terrain
New Stakes for the longbowmen
Preliminaries for the next village
Almost finished celtic village - trees up next.

Old Comments:
Per: Det ser fandme godt ud. Er de også konstrueret til elefanter? ellers bruger jeg dem ikke!
Hamilkar

Kasper: Takker, men dine fedtede tykhuder har værsgo' at benytte vadestederne - vi skal ikke risikere mine fine broer styrter sammen. :-)

6milphil: Nice terrain, I like the piling in lots of detail on each one I think that always adds to the feel of a game. Those celtic villages are Mainly Military ones aren't they? MM51 & MM51a?
Have a look; http://www.chilternminiatures.co.uk/catalog/index.php/cPath/979_986/sort/1a/page/3
I've used them as African native villages in my colonial games.
cheers,
6milPhil