Before the Architects of War line went defunct, I picked up their walled garden set that was repainted by Escenografia Epsilon. I liked the look of the model and paint job. More recently, I came across an old AoW garden kit on eBay and decided to pick that up. The add was a little deceptive (in my opinion), as I was expecting a painted piece. Unfortunately, what I got was a kit.. Well, the price was still right, so I decided to keep it.
Keeping my terrain painting push in play, I recently moved onto working on more terrain for my F&I gaming, so I pulled this piece out, along with some wheel barrows from GW that I had in the same box. While stopping by my FLGS to get more washes, I noticed a town sign boards from Wiz Kids and thought that would make a nice add to my scatter terrain and picked that up too.
The painted kit went with a dark brown fresh/wet dirt look, so I decided to do the same with the unpainted kit. I also decided to go with an oiled look on the sign board, instead of my normal aged gray. I put the garden together (you have to attach all the plants and garden tools) with some super glue and sprayed everything with Krylon camo brown.
All the models got a dark brown wash to give more relief. I then dry brushed everything up a bit with lighter shades of brown and tan. I went back and painted the plants different shades of green and the rocks grey. A few washes and dry brushing and finished up the details. Finally, I added by flock mix from Scenic Effects to finish the models. Looking at the painted version, next to the pre-painted version, I was happy with the result. However, the repainted version now looked a little too dreary, so I added some flock to brighten it up and match it better.
The wheel barrows were from the old GW siege set. I just hit them with a lighter brown, wash and dry brushed them up. The sign followed the same color pallet as the garden, just with the paper painted up to off white and some black markings to reflect text. I thought about going with actual text using a Rapidograph, but decided I did not want to lock myself into a single language. I just used a Sharpie to give a text effect instead.
Now I have some gardens with flavor! Unfortunately, these excellent kits are no longer available, but you can often find them on eBay if your looking for something a little different!
- Mantueffel