French Ardennes village units

 We now jump forward from about 1991 to 1998. I can't remember why I hardly made any models for so long in between. I think I was just busy gaming, writing rules and occupied in other departments of life. But new models were to come thick and fast from 1998 onwards. First there was this range of "village units" from the Ardennes region of France. Most areas of most European countries have their own very distinct styles of rural, traditional building, the "vernacular" as architects say. There certainly isn't any such thing as a generic "French" building, as I viewed and photographed on a tour of eastern France that year.

Having by this time become interested in the study of these building styles, I had to choose one area to focus on. The French Ardennes seemed to fit this bill, as it would suit several periods we were building up armies for: Mark Sturmey was doing 28mm Franco-Prussian War, Garry Broom was doing 20mm late WWII Germans and Americans and I was doing 1940 French. Plenty happened in the Ardennes in all three of these periods, even if it was mostly bad news for France.

The characteristic slate roofs were mostly from the Wills sheets, as was the stonework on the two churches. The house walls were made from vacuum-formed sheets by Slaters Plasticard, which proved easy to cut but a bit flat in texture compared to the Wills, and needing reinforcement inside the corners.

With stone walls you see the mortar if it's fairly recent (left-hand house), but not where it's crumbled and got dirty as on the other two. The windows here were from the mesh that can be cut from DIY store soffit vents.

I was quite taken with the convincing "natural daylight" effect here, as discussed under the Japanese castle post.

This church must have been added a year or two later on when I had mastered the moulding and casting of parts. The upper and lower dome, the roof triangles, windows and door are resin castings.

There's a bit of a stained glass effect here. It was just splodges of paint and ink, with no attempt to portray actual images this time.

French recce troops in the Ardennes, 1940.

My "condensed" style of 28mm building works for 20mm as well as 28mm figures, though it would look too small for 28mm skirmish games, where you have to think more about the individual buildings.

Prussians storm through a village in 1870. These figures were commercially painted for Mark. The ivy on the graveyard isn't entirely successful.

French Chasseurs a Pied defend another village.  I built the spire for this church, but took a mould so I could use it elsewhere as a casting. The upper windows come from a model railway building kit (Faller or whatever). The "Italianate" windows were castings from my Italian buildings. The style was popular across Europe and the US for a time in the nineteenth century.