28mm - Spanish House - Grand Manner

Here we have a building of a Spanish house and a wall.  Both of these were made in resin by Grand Manner.

I held off of painting these until I had done my 'Wellington Experience' trip to Spain and Portugal in September.  I was glad I did, as I took as many photos of older buildings whenever I could.  

It wasn't just the buildings either, I was snapping the general landscape, plants, rocks, soil and anything really which might have a future wargaming scenery bearing. 

The building and the wall were my last orders placed with Grand Manner before they shut up the shop.  These were bought as plain resin so it was for me to paint them up. I prefer to paint my own buildings up anyway and am always surprised how it takes far less time than I think it will.

MDF is great and is excellent for economy but resin still seems to have more character. Each stone has shape and the building can teem with raised detail.

I love the little sheltered store on the side with wine barrels, and storage jars and cobbles.  I can spend a long time just enjoying seeing all of the detail.

The wall is really detailed too and there are broken pantiles among the stone debris.  It was quite good fun trying to spot those among the stonework and pick those out with a brush.  I did have to go back over a few things, and I am sure I may have missed some among the debris.  I love the damaged sections, you can imagine the cannonballs slamming into it to cause that damage.

The detail inside the houses are really nice too. Not done to excess, as you might wish to put figures in there too...but just enough to add character.  I decided that mine was going to look lived in by someone living a very spartan lifestyle. Perhaps a small-holding farmer who has only recently left on hearing of Napoleons's army advancing.  Those barrels and pots are still unbroken so the infantry haven't got inside there yet!

I will miss receiving orders from Grand Manner. Every little loose item was carefully wrapped and bubble-wrapped and placed in such a way that it would not be damaged. The care and attention was a marvel and must have taken ages to prepare to send.  I bought as much as I realistically could before they closed up.

Here are some photos that I used to get inspiration for the stone and pantile colours.  This is actually in the street in Fuentos de Onoro which goes up to the Church, where some of the heaviest fighting raged.  Like so many Spanish buildings, these seem to have been largely left as they were before the occupants moved out.  In the below picture the loopholes can still be seen in the walls of houses.  It's quite difficult to imagine that the road going up where the tour member can be seen below was probably 3-deep in dead. Sobering thoughts.  I will post more pics up of my tour to the battlefields soon - I'm still labelling up the 750 photos!  I need to do this whilst I still remember where they were taken and what the significance of the photos were!

On the workbench currently is another Peninsular War treat, but as always with Napoleonics it is time consuming. I really feel like painting Arthurians/Saxons next as I have started reading the Bernard Cornwell trilogy relating to that period (I can't put the first book down!).