Stephen Langton.

The List of participants present at the  Magna Carta sighning -   Barons, Bishops and Abbots,  continues with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury,
One of his Brothers, Simon Langton, I´ve already painted up HERE.

Tholos

A Tholos -  Quote;


"A tholos (sometimes tholus, from Ancient Greek θόλος) is an ancient Roman feature found in the macellum. It is a round structure, usually built upon a couple of steps (a podium), with a ring of columns supporting a domed roof. It has been suggested that the tholos, well provided with water and drains, was where fish were sold, although other uses for the central tholos have been suggested, such as the place where official weights and measures were held for reference or as shrines to the gods of the market place. Some macella had a water fountain or water feature in the centre of their courtyard instead of a tholos structure."

This one´s a bit too big for the new Forum and way to big for the original one (Now a Macellum) which has a water Feature anyway, so it might end up either as a feature on it´s own, or..if I ever get it together, as a centre Piece for a bigger Macellum.

The pillars. Not exactly the effect I was looking for, neat and tidy, but it ended up looking having a bit more of a "used" look.
The Problem with pillars is getting them all the exact same length, especially with Long section like the New Forum. Get one or two a bit too short or longer than the others and it warps the roofing.

The bits and pices needed. A Kebab stick, set square,some corrugated biscuit paper, PVA and some A4 paper.

Simply mark off the A4 paper in strips of the required height and glue to the Kebab sticks, leaving a bit at the end so it can be attached to the flooring / Overhead construction. The set square is used to check wether the paper Strip is at a right angle to the Kebab stick. Get it at a slight out of true angle and when it´s rolled up it gets longer than required.

Simply smear some PVA along the paper and roll it up. Cut some corrugated to the required width and glue on. Paint and Cut off the rest of the Kebab stick.  I´ve now realised I should have cut the corrugated paper into 1cm strips to give the effect that the pillars are made out of sections...but "ya live un learn"  :-)

For those who haven´t seen it...this 1/35th scale dio, a Workshop with a scrapyard is well worth a look. Try and spot the human skull :-)

Forum Romanum Mk II

The old Forum wasn´t quite forummy enough..it lacked a Basilica, so a bigger one has been built. No red paintwork on the pillars..the town was starting to look to much like RTW.

Rear side. Normally, around the courtyard there would have been Shops, but I´ve used a single wall as adding two walls for the Shops would have meant expanding the area of the whole Thing and it would have put the whole town out of `Balance`.

The pillars. Paper and toothpicks ;-).

 

The whole town so far, 19 of the panned 40 buildings. The original Forum, which will now become a "Macellum". It´s a bit too small to add a Tholos....so maybe I´ll convert it into a housing block or stables and build a new Macelum.

 

 

Veritas vos liberabit

My entry for  a "competition" over at the  Valdemars forum

The rules for entry were;

- Only knights allowed -  hospitallers, at least one hospitaller present - Check!

- At least one holy symbol represented, relic, banner, cross, half moon' - Check!

- At least one Valdemar figure - Check!

- At least one animal - Check!

- Needs to be a new Piece of work to take part - Check!

On his travels to the holy land a hospitaller Comes across a wayside cross.

He stops, and as he prays, Dobbin takes a wayside Snack.

Both the Hospitaller and Dobbin are Valdemar. Dobbin came without a saddle so one had to be made. Got it all base painted but it just didn´t look right....no stirrups!!! Remove saddle, recreate with stirrups (very thin plastic Card) add saddle again.

The helmet is from the Caeser Dismounted Crusaders set.

The crucifix is from the Valdemar Tax collectors set and was carefully sliced out of the sedan chair. Not carefully enough...It broke into 4 parts, the right side of the cross shot off into "never to be seen again land" so that had to be reconstructed. The cross it´s attached to is made from high density styrofoam. The moss is tiny bits of old rubber foam.

Veritas vos liberabit ? A variant of Veritas liberabit vos (the truth shall set you free) and was used by the   Knights Hospitaller during the crusades. 

Turcopoles - Strelets.

Or "turcoples", "turcopoli" or "turcopoliers".

As noted at PSR, the set lacks any Lance carrying bods but I plan on adding some using bods from the Mounted Crusaders in Oriental Dress and Military Order Sergeants sets.

A common error, not just by strelets but a few manufacturers, the arrow is laid on the wrong side of the bow stave. In a lot of cases this can be corrected but with these it proved impossible. I´ll most probably get the set again and convert some into mounted crossbowmen.

One or two of the nags from the set I swopped with nags from other sets..this one (below) is from the Roman Cavalry on the March set. 

The Standard. On the box art it Shows a Dragon type of Standard but seeing as they would have been part of a crusader army and attached to a Military order, they would more than likely carried a cross or whatever. I didn´t want to Limit them to one order or other, after a bit of searching I found THIS on the Dansk Figursspilsforening site.  It´s a flag from a Danish Family called Vingad Pil. It suggests, with the wings, mounted archers. All I´ve done is add the swallow tails.

The Standard bearer is from the Military order Sergeants set.

Another roman house

The good thing about Roman buildings..there´s so many different types based on a similar design! :-D  This one could be a pair of merchants residences..not quite rich enough for a town house/Villa but not so poor that they have to live in an insula.

A "clever" bit of construction was required to get the centre Support constructed

Front entrance

Rear.

"Gillies" - Bannockburn

"Lay on! Lay on! Lay on! They fail!"
The "camp followers"..or sma' folk, also refered to as "Gillies". Apparently "Gillies"  is a corruption of the Gaelic word for young men. It´s more commonly accepted they were clansmen, who, at the closing phase of the battle, charged en-masse.  


Sets used;
The Scottish Army of Wallace
Scottish Army of Robert Bruce
Scottish Schiltron
Medieval Levy (1)
Ancient Germans

The Standard, is from the Myneris (Menzies) Clan led on the day by Sir Robert de  Myneris. The Clan Menzies still owns a remnant of a set of bagpipes said to have been carried at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, though this claim is debated. The Bagpipes have been altered, two of the drones removed leaving  a canter, blow pipe and single drone, so they look a bit more medieval.

What a big sword he´s got!!..and judging by the flock attached to him (bloody static!!) he´s been hacking the grass.

A poor english soldier who couldn´t run fast enough has been caught by Hamish 

Roman Insula. No1

Due to an influx of workers, there has to be somewhere for them to live and as the area available
isn´t that great, it was considered by the town planners to go upwards instead of sideways.

The small courtyard.

View along the shop fronts.

The back stairs

Just to prove that the building is hollow...a view through some upstairs Windows

 What to build next???? :-D

Roman buildings - How to

After a lot of Messing about I´ve  got the last two pics uploaded.
Basically, if you can measure and cut at a right angle..it´s easy.

First of..what do you Need? For the structure (walls) I use 1cm thick insulating foam. It´s cheap and one pack should allow the creation of  dozens of buildings.

Then some fine dry sand, some PVA glue, a sharp knife, right angle, some board Pins, a pen, corrugated paper from a biscuit packet (or similar)  and some normal dress Pins, some card (Cereal packet or similar) and a ruler.

Yes..the PVA is in an old washing up liquid bottle..it´s easy to use and the cap doesn´t get all clogged up which means an airtight seal.

Paints I use are cheap acrylics, the sort used for painting walls. You´ll need White, chocolate Brown and red and a 1" Paintbrush.

This building will be a Taverne with a small storehouse attached but after making a few your Imagination can lead you anywhere, curved arches, complicated roofing with Loggias, balconys and and......

Mark up and cut out the wall sections. For marking out the pattern, don´t use felttip pens or biros with blue ink.  They can write easily on the polystyrene but the ink bleeds really badly into the PVA - sand mix and later bleeds into the paints. I found this out when I made the Roman baths.  I had to glue tinfoil over the effected Areas, then cover that with sand and PVA mix to seal the ink in. Okay, I found a solution but it wasted time.

After prefitting to see if the wall sections match up and the building looks square, glue them together. The Dress Pins are used to hold the parts in place as it drys. I´ve recently found out that toothpicks are also good. A short length of one pointy end and then push it in completely. This doesn´t work where there are openings like doors etc but the toothpicks hold way better than the Pins.

When it´s dry, remove the Pins (in the case of toothpicks they stay put) and  smear PVA over the walls (just a thin layer) and sprinkle fine sand over them. As can be seen, I´ve added a floor to this one. This building  will have a removable Roof so the floor is necessary but in general the flooring  doesn´t have to be added.

As the flooring is made from the same 1cm polystyrene it means the door will end up higher than the outside floor and steps will have to be added. As I´d planned to add a floor I also made the doorway 1cm higher to take this into account.

When the sand has dried, paint.

Another step, window and door Frames. Like the flooring,  these aren´t  necessary but it adds to the General look of the finished building.  These are simply made from coffee sticks, cut to length, the top and bottom of the Frame glued in first, then the sides. Any small gaps can be filled by putting some PVA on your fingertip and smearing it over the cracks. The easiest way of placing the pieces of coffee stick is to use an old pair of tweezers.

Now the Roof. Thin Card folded and cut to shape. Put PVA along the top of all the walls and then attach the Card, Holding it down with the board Pins. It´s best to start the  pinning down from the top of the Roof and working down to the bottom.

The tiles. On the left is the back of the corrugated paper which is first marked off (on the back of the sheet, not the corrugated side) in 1 cm strips. Then paint the corrugated side with chocolate Brown paint. It´s best not to paint the whole sheet in one go but cut it in half because as it gets wet it warps  and you can cover half of the sheet faster before it warps than the whole sheet. 

When the corrugated paper has dried cut it into strips.  Simply apply glue to the back of each Strip and attach, overlapping each new Strip a tiny bit over the previous one.  It doesn´t work as well if the glue is just smeared on the Card as the overlap doesn´t attach properly to the previous layer.

Finally the tiles for the top of the Roof. These are made with  0.5cm wide strips of Card cut into lengths of about 0.8 cm´s. Each one is then curved lengthways over a Paintbrush handle.

Keeping hold of the Paintbrush, dip the end of the handle into some PVA, smear it under the tile and attach. It´s a good idea to keep a tissue handy to occasionally wipe off any excess PVA from the Paintbrush.

When it´s all dried, paint with chocolate Brown, then let  it dry (a hairdryer Speeds this up) and dry brush firstly with mix of brick red and chocolate Brown, then a final drybrush with brick red.

Scottish command - Bannockburn

The "big" man himself, Robert de Bruce along with  Alexander Scrymgeour plus trumpeter.

Alexander Scrymgeour, the Royal banner bearer to Robert de Bruce

Un-named trumpeter. He´s been given the Annandale coat - of - arms  on his nag. Or a saltire and chief Gules .

 

The man himself.  I don´t want to ever again paint his  coat-of-arms, the royal Standard, Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory counter-flory .....or  an easier description - Gules (Red) lion rampant with Azure (blue) claws and tongue, within a red double border having a motif of alternating heraldic lilies, on a Or (yellow) field.