6mm Hougoumont

This terrain piece has been almost a year in the making.  I was so impressed with Glenn Drover's giant Hougoumont model that I bought the necessary buildings from The Wargaming Company (the buildings are made by Leven Miniatures).  This is a somewhat stylized representation of the famous farm complex, but it makes for a stunning bit of terrain.

I cut a large, thin piece of plywood to serve as the base.  I sanded the edges and corners until they were all smooth and rounded.  I primed the wood with rattle can grey primer, and once it was dry, I applied a coat of Liquitex Ceramic Stucco  texture gel to the entire base.  While it was still wet, I used superglue to attach the resin buildings and fences.

Once everything had cured for a few days, I used an electric drill to make holes where I wanted trees.  I glued round cocktail toothpicks into the wood to serve as tree trunks.  Once that glue was dry, I primed the whole thing with rattle can white primer.

It is surprisingly difficult to find accurate pictures of Hougoumont.  I settled on a couple of 19th century color lithographs to help me with colors.  I had a tough time settling on the correct oranges and browns for the buildings, and months stretched by as I repeatedly experimented with different shades.  This past weekend I just decided that I should finish the model and move on.  It turned out I was agonizing over nothing, because I am quite pleased with how the colors turned out!

Two days with my bix box of flocking materials resulted in the foliage as you see it.  I painted the ground a medium tan then used a light khaki color to drybrush the texture.  The static grass is from Gale Force 9.  I added clump foliage from Woodland Scenics wherever I thought rain water would fall from the roofs.  More clump foliage went on the toothpicks to create leafy trees.  Finally the formal garden got Army Painter tufts, which I then drybrushed in bright colors to represent flowers.

All told, I probably put in about two weeks' work on this model.  I just stretched those two weeks out over 10 months!  This should be beautiful on the table.