15 mm Medieval Baggage Tents

One of the things I found during my recent “sort out” was a pair of very old resin tents.  They were hidden away in the toolbox containing my Italian Wars army.

They are old models and pre-date the wonderful Baueda range.  The sculpting is basic. The castings are a bit rough too.  Nonetheless, I fancied painting something different.

So I removed the old groundwork, sanded down the castings to get as smooth a finish as I could and set about turning a sow's ear into a silk purse (if that's possible).  Here are the results:

As you can see, I've used a very cartoonish style for these.  They would look awful with a more detailed approach, as the sculpting & surface finish just isn't good enough.

At first, I wasn't happy: the roofs were all right, but the walls didn't look right.  The breakthrough came when I decided to paint a small black circle on each roof apex and to line up two wall sections with one roof section.  The former really tidies up the point at which many panels meet and was proving a swine to paint freehand.

As you can see, the models are painted with layers to simulate depth and folds.  I used a buff base for the white on the larger model and a light grey for the smaller model.  If you look closely at the larger images, you can see the base coat through the thinner portions of the white top coat: I applied many coats of white!  The buff base is my favourite.

Finally, a note on varnishing.  Despite my best efforts, both the red and white paints dried satin.  I know from experience that this means one coat of Humbrol Matt Cote would not be enough.  This proved correct and so the models were given a generous a coat of Winsor & Newton Galleria Matt Varnish which produced a lovely matt finish but only after the models had been allowed to dry for a week.