Japanese building base tutorial

As promised (although later than I would've liked), here is the tutorial for basing some Japanese village buildings. It's just a small, but useful building base and when coupled with others would make a large village/objective.

First off again is the selection of products included in the project. They've already been painted and there is a building painting tutorial earlier in the blog.

Japaese village buildings

Japanese additions

The buildings I've chosen for this are JV03, JV04 and JV05; two houses and a storehouse/kura. The main addition added is the new lean to, JA32. Various other small additions will be added but kept loose.

There was a slight gap between the lean to and the kura wall which was filled with balsa wood before painting.

The well and outhouse (JA31 and JA02) will be stuck to the base.

3mm mdf was used for the base and the buildings were loosely laid out and moved around until an arrangement was decided on.

They were stuck down with super glue but 2 part epoxy glue could be used also.

It's a good idea for historical building bases not to have anything to straight or perpendicular with other items as this can help give the 'lived in' appearance.

A couple of small, raised beds were added with some 1.5mm cardboard that had it's edges smoothed over. Raised beds were and are a popular method for growing vegetables in Japan.

They were stuck down with wood glue and then covered over with my usual ground surface mix which is brown acrylic decorators caulk mixed with fine sand.

This was applied with a spatula over the whole base.

The whole base was covered with the caulk mix and left to dry.

The raised beds were blended in somewhat with the caulk and care was taken around the buildings

The spatula is also to to give a slightly rough texture to the ground surface, this takes a bit of practise as the spreading marks left by the initial application need to be removed, but of course using the spatula for this can create more...

Once the caulk is dry, the whole base is given a coat of my ground base colour which is a warm grey from B&Q Valspar tester pots (although I have a 2.5ltr tub of it).

Then, when the base colour is dry, I drybrush over the whole area with three successively lighter shades of brown paying attention to areas that would've been well trodden be the inhabitants. A light tan was finally added to the heavy footfall areas.

The next stage was to add some fencing around part of the perimeter.

They are Japanese toothpicks and the base has a slighter smaller hole drilled in it (2mm in this case) and then the point is glued in the hole.

I use a card jig to cut the toothpicks to a decent height with a pair of wire snips as it gives more regularity than doing them by eye.

Slightly thinner horizontals are glued with wood glue between the uprights and once these are dry, the whole fence is given an ink wash of green/brown (GW Athonian Camoshade).

When the ink is dry, a light drybrush of a slightly green tan is applied all over the fence to help make it look like bamboo.

In the past, I've tied the bamboo together but not this time...

With the fencing done, it's time for my favourite part of any build; the greenery.

A mix of various shades of 2mm grass was applied with a medium brush onto the areas that wouldn't have any footfall using slightly watered down wood glue. It's applied by grabbing a 'clump' with my fingers and then dabbing the grass vigorously over the areas with the glue and, once dry, the base was turned upside down and slapped to remove the excess.

The second layer of greenery is a mish mash mix of various grades and colours of foam flock that I've acquired over the years.

I have a large, clear plastic bag that's half full and gets topped up with whatever I have to hand (old tree flock, cheap railway modelling flock etc).

This is applied in the corners and edges between buildings and the ground to represent overgrown areas.

As can be seen in this photo, the courser flock is put down in smaller areas so as not to overwhelm the model.

A few fine patches of grass were added to the main internal area to help break up the monotonous surface.

For the veggies, two of the raised beds had fairly generic greenery put on them representing typical crops that might have been present. The third bed has something special...

Daikon are a Japanese staple and appear in various forms when cooked. It's basically a large, fairly tasteless radish (I'm not a massive fan unless they're pickled lol).

I took some toothpicks, added a touch of green paint and then drilled some 1:1000 scale palm trees to the tops. They were then trimmed to length. I left two and carved them to look like they had just been removed from the beds.

A bit of whimsical fun :-D

So, that's about it for this tutorial. There is a bamboo fence between the storehouse and one of the buildings but I'll do a small tutorial on that in the future as it could be quite useful on it's own.

There were also a few choice tufts added here and there, not too many to overwhelm the base but enough to make it more interesting.

The additions, as mentioned, have been kept loose to allow for better gameplay or even to be used for objectives.

As a final measure, the whole model was given a coat of Windsor & Newton matt varnish spray and left to dry (which can be relatively quick in the sun).

Again, I hope this tutorial has been of use and there are several more tutorials planned which will be posted this year.

cheers

James

OSHIROmodels

info@oshiromodelterrain.co.uk