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Tabletop World Townhouse


It's been five years since I invested in some tiny resin real estate from Tabletop World (the guard tower, thanks for remembering). Their kits remain a joy to paint. So long as one is familiar with a drybrush, one is in for an easy ride. Today's post is really just a few photos of the finished thing, with a few tips on the most interesting elements of the painting.

Using a brown primer
The one change I made to the usual "prime black and start drybrushing" method was to prime with TT Combat's Laser Cut Brown spray. Arguably it's too rich and red a brown to serve as a universal undercoat, and one can tone it down by slapping a quick bodge-brushed layer of Vallejo's burnt umber over the top, but overall that brown tone really added some warmth to the stone. I'll definitely repeat this with the next building but it's a bit intense on the wood, so next time I'll hit all the wood areas with the burnt umber before proceeding to the drybrushing.

Painting the plasterwork
So long as you've done a general drybrush of the timber and stone, you'll naturally overspill onto the plasterwork. That means I leave plaster until the end, then apply a single watered down layer of the colour of choice (a mid-blue, in this case) so that you can still see the drybrushing through it. When that's dry, I go over it with a light grey-blue drybrush to increase the tonal variation (ding!).

Mould/lichen... err... green bits
As with my other Tabletop World buildings I applied some green pigment powder at ground level. Unlike my other buildings, though, I didn't apply it in powder form. As with my recent ork stuff, I mixed it with Vallejo matte medium on the palette first. That way it's more like a self-sealing wash, but with better colour intensity.

The thing with nails and I
Initially I was going to ignore all the nails lovingly sculpted into the timbers and shingles, but having been hit by the final highlight drybrush they really caught the light in a bad way. Ultimately I went over them with some dark brown, and they faded back into the background as a lovely bit of detail that look so naturally in place that no-one will ever see or take note of them. Mostly because they'll be looking at the pumpkin of whimsey.

Magnetic porches for the win
That bloody porch straddles three floors of the building, which is less than ideal for avoiding breakages when accessing the interior (which, full disclosure, I haven't painted yet). So I magnetised it! Cheeseoid pleased with self.


In closing
If there's anything else on the paint job you're curious about, get at me in the comments. I imagine Maisey will be back next week with more AdMech while I continue to beaver away on my orks. Cheers all!

Comments

  1. I've never used the TTCombat paints but my go to is Halfords Camouflage Brown as a terrain undercoat, it's a nice dark de-saturated matte brown

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    1. That's good knowledge, thank you! I'll give it a try when I next need some brown spray :)

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  2. Blue seems like a pretty unusual color for plaster, but it is very striking! Pushes the structure further into the fantasy side of things, but not so far that it could not just be an eccentric building in a otherwise bland town.

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    Replies
    1. I was in two minds myself, but when Drew suggested it I quite liked how it looked. I imagined it was originally built by someone rich enough to afford such an extravagance, who then fell on hard times.

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