Modelling an Italian village in N scale from scratch - part 5: the Municipio
2024/10/24
Benvenuto a Val dei Pomi!
The Municipio on the central square is a real eye catcher, in the real Italian town as well as on the layout. Time to up my game!
Now, during this summer, I did a nice one-day workshop painting for modellers, where I picked up new techniques and inspiration.
Most of all, dry mixing with acrylic paint to make gradients. The bottom of a building is always a bit dirtier hence darker, and large surfaces in the real world never look the same colour because of the light. Wow, what a difference compared to the drybrushing technique I used on previous buildings.
First I tried it on the backside, which will be hardly visible on the layout. That was nice but a bit coarse. For the sides I chose colours that matched better. Also, the dirt at the bottom is much more subtle this way.
On the pic at the left side an experiment. I printed a window with curtains drawn on paper and covered it thinly with nail polish. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite work. The laserprinted ‘ink’ became slightly blurry, and the shine was nothing to write home about. Okay then.
I added the paper as a third layer sandwiched inbetween the two others because I wanted to add something else from the original. The town has a handful of buildings with mediaeval frescoes on the outside wall, some hardly visible, some very handsomely restored. The actual city hall doesn’t have one, but hey, my layout, my rules! I liked to put them here. It is in a side alley on the left, and next to a sloping road on the right, both should attract the eye to it.
And did I say layers? Layers, layers, layers: the more, the more realistic. So to the window apartures, I added an overhanging bar, supposed to be of a type of stone that gets smudgy easily, might be marble even. Tiny strip sof carton fell apart too easily, so I made them of strips of styrene, which got a grey primer, then white, black and green drybrushed.
Another thing I picked up from that workshop: woodwork also has a gradient, but compared to the wall it’s in the other direction. The bottom gets more rain so the paintwork chips and cracks more, with the effect that it’s lighter. So, a wet mix on these tiny blinds of two types of red - but light enough that the printed pattern still shines through. I can hardly see the effect, but I think it helps to do it anyway. Our eyes are trained to spot repeating patterns, and this introduces an extra random factor, causing it to look more real. I hope :)
To paint these tiny bits of carton, I put them on a the sticky surface of painters tape (which itself was taped to a bit of wood). This made it easier to also paint the sides properly.
This was starting to look really great! Which made me so happy that I got inspired to create an interior and internal lighting. Hadn’t thought of that before, so that was some careful drawing and adjusting in Inkscape. The idea is to give a hint of slightly drab archive rooms and offices hemmed into an old building.
I fantasized that the mayor ordered that the building was to be spuised up with a grand entrance in the eighties. So I cobbled together a large glass staircase, using some ribbed transparant hard plastic.
The central hall on the first floor is in the prototype the hall where the council meets. So that calls for a meeting of the Val dei Pomi consiglio!
The meeting’s running late, so Gianluca the janitor calls it a day.
A faint green led to suggest a ‘way out’ sign:
All in all I had a lot of fun creating these scenes. Of which just a hint will actually be visible…
To add extra depth - layers! - I cut out an extra outstanding piece of the front door (or to be precise, I kept trying until I finally got one right).
The city hall opens to the balcony with two large two-part doors with full height windows. Essential to get these right, and not elements I can use kit windows for. So I turned to the ‘sticky label method’ from Chandwell. That took a lot of patience and tries to get right!
To create a balcony with metal bars I used a brass ladder, with a strip of styrene on top.
And here it is then, in the scene. Wow! Next to the other buildings I built earlier, the municipio looks much livelier and mor realistic. Those gradients make a big difference. I’m tempted to repaint the other buildings - but let’s not go there, it’ll be very hard to paint them with all the elements already glued together, especially dry mixing colours. Also, there will be a row of buildings in front of them - I’m working back to front on purpose.
All in all, I’m very happy with how this scene is starting to come together. A proper eye catcher indeed!