Written By Sarah-Anne
When I started making the very first Victorian Ruin buildings I knew I wanted a centerpiece that would act as the focal point of the gaming table. And one theme that kept coming back to me was the idea of a 'secret' walled brick garden. At this point you will have already seen the fountain and garden planters that fit inside the garden, but I wanted to do something really special with the walls themselves. As I was very pleased with how the brick and stone texture worked out on the buildings, I wanted to see how they would play together as walls. For this project I thought it would be most important to use real world examples as inspiration, and fell in love with the walls in this image:
My brick and stone walls were made in much the same way as the buildings, fountain, and planters, but when I went back through my photos to add the step-by-step instructions.... they weren't there. The only one I could find of the walls prior to painting was this one of it already assembled. Sigh.
For painting the walls, I used the same techniques for texturing, carving, and painting bricks and stone already described in this blog, though I made sure to add extra weathering with a brown wash along the base and in the corners - anywhere grit and grim would naturally accumulate.
At this point it wasn't enough that these walls were broken down, I wanted to impart the feeling that nature was slowly reclaiming her own. So using the same technique for adding vines to the fountain, I added several clumps of foliage along each side of the walls.
The most time consuming part of the project was actually creating the templates in the beginning (since I wanted to ensure all the walls were the same lengths and shapes) and I am pretty bummed that the photos I took of those steps are now gone. If I were to do this project again the main (and probably only) thing I would change is the width of the doorway arches. Since these were created with the game of Malifaux in mind, they should have been at least 50mm wide in order to accommodate all model bases to easily pass through. I will have to remember that for next time! Before I called these complete I added some scenic flocking in Burnt Grass to some of the stone bases and gave all the models a couple good coats of matte sealant.
Finally, here are the walls in action on the game mat. Enjoy!
