Not a great deal of time this weekend for modelling, but the one thing I wanted to address were those lead windows. Something bugged me, and I think it was the colour. When I first had this idea it was back in January when I was suffering a chest infection, and was making hot lemon and honey drinks, I had two bags of lemons, one was black and the other yellow. It was the black bag that had sowed the seed of the idea.

With this in mind I hunted the fruit and veg section of the supermarket until I found a bag of limes in a black bag. I added the limes to the shopping basket and then needed something to do with them so added a case of Sol to the shopping as well. Ok, my beer fridge needed restocking as well so all was not lost, it wasn’t quite the over indulgence just for netting.

So this time I took a bit more care about preparing the material, with the second piece of the plastic sheet I clipped the netting to the sheet first, then lightly sprayed with the glue.  

Last time I used too much and the sheet was sticking to everything especially when I was trying to lay the netting out on it. 

This time, with the netting prefixed on the sheet it pulled over much easier and neater.

Left over night to dry I then cut the small squares out and slotted them in place, I think the black works much better, although the size of the netting is slightly larger than the first red netting. 

Ok, vote time – which do you guys think works best the red or the black?

 

My main aim this weekend was to try and get the last of the thatched cottages that I had on the go finished. When I last worked on it I had painted the thatch but was not happy with it. I had used the same golden shades as I had before but I had deliberately dirtied it up between coats by painting it with the dirty water used for cleaning brushes.  I was also in two minds as to whether to wood paint the timber frame work or go for the black effect. 

Whilst I was out shopping on Saturday I found a whole lot of acrylic paints being sold off cheap in WH Smith, mainly brown shades, obviously not popular with regular artists but great when you’re mainly painting thatch and wood.

Here is my hoard of paints. This is nice paint, Windsor and Newton’s Galeria range, and works really well, really nice to work with.

From this hoard I selected three colours, which basically decided the outcome of my painting dilemmas. Raw Sienna when painted over the existing thatch gave it a wonderful golden effect, combined with everything that had gone on before it blended in to give a result I am really pleased with. Also in the batch of paint was Ivory Black, this made up my mind; the wood work was going to get a coat of this. I also picked their Burnt Umber for the two doors. These were painted over with the base Burnt Umber, then a Burnt Umber and White mix to soften the wood and give an aged effect.

I have now completed most of the paint work on this model, and I’ve come to the assumption it’s more of a country pub now that an a cottage, funny how these things take on a whole new character as you work on them.

The photo at the top of this blog is without the new windows, and the photos below are with the windows fitted.