Fort Blood!

"Fort Blood" seems an appropriately cinematic name for my Pathan hill fort, since this build caused a trip to the Emergency Room for stitches and there are actually drops of blood beneath the paint when I nicked myself carving the rocky outcrop for the tower.


Finished fort

I liked the odd scaffoldy thing around the single tower so much I added it to the tower on the bigger fort too. I pre-drilled some holes and then glued in pieces of bamboo skewer. I then added planks made from cut up wooden coffee stirrers.

Roofs come off and gate opens

 I also decided to cut apart the single tower and it's outbuilding, making them two pieces and more flexible for layouts. I decided that I may want a lone tower on a small hill, and the addition of the outbuilding could keep it from fitting.


Finished tower

 I then gave everything a skim coat of a gritty textured grout, piling extra around the bases of the walls to smooth out the corners and make everything seem a bit more organic. I then set it aside for 24 hours to dry. The removable roof sections had to be trimmed down so they would fit again. The grout made the already snug fit too tight.


Top floor comes off

 Next night I gave everything a coat of paint from my big pail of dark chocolate brown interior latex that I used to paint my NW Frontier hills and mountains and again set aside for 24 hours to dry.

I then started dry brushing. A large, flat tipped regular paint brush is still too small and was resulting in a blotchy effect, which was unpleasing. I switched to a house painting brush wide enough to do the towers in one pass, but it held so much water in the bristles that it resulted in more of a wash that a dry brush. But I gave all pieces a thorough going over, using the smaller brush to get into corners and windows etc.

The results were still pretty blotchy, so I went to Canadian Tire and used my accumulated Canadian Tire money to buy a can of Krylon Satin finish Almond and a can of Satin finish Ivory  spray paints for highlighting.



Outbuilding

The thatch roof on the storage shed gave some problems. A first attempt using a square of teddy bear fur resulted in a rounded roof that looked somewhat like a soggy square of shredded wheat. This was not quite what I was looking for.

Roofs come off

The bunnies came to my aid by donating some hay to the cause. I sliced the pieces of hay into smaller thicknesses and then cut to shorter lengths. These were then glued onto the roof section in rows and built up to a desirable thickness using liberal amounts of watered down white glue. I then gave it a heavy wash of watered down burnt umber. The natural colour of the hay showing through in spots for some natural highlighting. 


Tribesmen try out the new digs



I originally tried a light grey dry brush on the wooden doors but this resulted in them being too washed out and disappearing into the walls, so I went over them again with khaki.

The rocks and base also got too heavy a treatment from the spray paint, so I went over them again with brown ink and dry brushed khaki. I spent a bit of extra time with a big soft round brush and the khaki paint softening the hard edge the ink made along the bottom of the walls.

Considering I've built these all out of scavenged material and off cuts and purchased the paints with Canadian Tire money, all three buildings are practically free!