BUILDING THE VILLA ON THE ROAD TO MESSINA

At the Tactica convention in Hamburg people had some questions about the construction of the villa on “The Road to Messina”.

In this article I would like to tell you how it was done.

To begin with, I apologise for the poor quality of the photos. In the age of digital cameras every fool should be able to shot acceptable photos. Here’s a wargamer who is the inglorious exception of the rule. Okay, I trusted the camera in deciding whether to use a flash or not. As a computer scientist I should have known better than having confidence in technical devices. ;-)

I researched on Renaissance villas at Wikipedia. Two villas left a great impression. The Villa Rotonda with the classical proportions which remind me of an antique temple and the colours of Villa Medici (Poggio a Caiano). What I had in mind was a combination these two buildings. And I wanted a downsized version. Smaller and more rural. A kind of villa, which might belong to a poorer, distant cousin from the provincial countryside.

I started with a different version of the villa. After I cut the walls I discarded it. The building turned out to be too small. Moreover the proportions didn’t fit. The windows were too big in relation to the whole. Also the windows in the first floor were quadratic, which didn’t fit into the golden ratio concept of Renaissance architecture.

Except the roof and pillars everything is made of styrodur foam board. The boards come with very small or bigger pores. For the walls I used 5 mm board with the bigger pores, because it is easier to cut the windows into these boards.

Window frames

As the side parts of the window-frames I pressed vertical grooves near the windows with a sharp pencil. The windowsills are small strips of 1 mm styrodur. The top elements of the frames are made from 2 mm styrodur. I used triangular shaped elements at the first floor and scraped a smaller triangle inside the elements with the point of a sharp knife. At the second floor I glued rectangular strips and pressed a "step" into it.

 

In the next step I glued the walls together and attached them to a rectangular floor piece of 5 mm styrodur.

Front stairs

The stairs were put together from strips of 3 mm boards. The walls at both sides of the front stairs are 5 mm thick. The U-shaped piece is the landing of the stairs and serves also as a kind of frame, which keeps the stair construction together.

Rear stairs

The staircase at the rear of the villa was built in a similar way. Later 1 mm strips slightly wider than the wall were put upon the banisters.

Portico

When constructing the portico I learned an important lesson. I should have painted the parts behind the pillars BEFORE I glued the portico to the wall.

The pillars are made of wood poles with vertical grooves already carved in. You ca buy these wood poles hobby/artist-shops. They resemble pillars with flutes.

I wanted to produce ionic capitals for pillars. I tried carving them from small styrodur blocks and I tried green stuff but both didn’t work. So I had to simplify the capital-design, which are now two small styrodur squares. I think, it’s okay for 15 mm scale.

I drilled small holes into the pillars and put small nails in it. This provides support for the pillar construction. The capitals and pedestals were pushed on the nails like meat on shashlik sticks.

The reliefs on the portal were pressed in the styrodur with a sculpting tool (originally designed to sculpt green stuff) from Games Workshop. A gentle press with the thick end of the sculpting tool leaves a U-shaped imprint. The small circle was imprinted with a plastic tube. The lines were imprinted with the sharp end of the sculpting tool.

Roof

The hipped roof consists of triangular and trapezoid foam board elements. (Wow! I am actually writing words like "hipped roof " and " trapezoid"! Thanks to Wikipedia and Online English Dictionary www.leo.org.)

I used adhesive tape to fix roof elements.

Tankred and I already talked about the techniques to produce roof tiles from corrugated card board in the article about the olive farm.

www.unfinished-armies.de/blog/blogeintrag/article/italian-olive-farm/

I made a little mistake in this step. I used to much glue to attach the corrugated card board to the styrodur. When the glue dried it contracted and bent the roof inward. Looks a little bit like a Chinese roof now.

The chimneys were also cut and carved from ... you can guess by now ... styrodur. The big chimney has two plastic tubes.

The roof is removable. Later I glued ledgers at the lower side of the roof to avoid the roof from slipping down.

 

I added ledgers which run around the house at the level of the top stairs.

 

After all the styrodur and wood parts had been glued together it was plastering time. I filled the gaps with ordinary filler normally used for home repairs.

Grey paint

I used paints called "Akademie Acryl color" from "Schmincke".

The first layer of the grey areas was a mix of pebble grey and black. I also painted this dark grey colour at the inner walls of the building to avoid the light shining through. I drybrushed with pure pebble grey and ivory.

Yellow paint

The first layer of the yellows areas was Naples yellow. I added a little pebble grey because the pure yellow would have been too shiny. Then I added "structure" from "RICO design". This is a mixture of white colour an fine sand. I drybrushed with a mix of yellow and ivory and finally with pure ivory.

Windows glass

I cut squares out of black card board and painted window crosses on them with brown coloured crayons. I added some lines with a white crayon on each "glass pane" to show the reflection of the light on the glass.

Unfortunately you can see the windows only if you look at them from a few inches distance. Next time I will try grey cardboard instead.

Doors

The doors were cut out of balsa wood. I scratched an few vertical line into the wood to give the impression of planks. The wood was painted in Citadel "Scorched Brown" and drybrushed with "Khemri Brown".

Sun dial

The sun dial is a rectangular piece of 1 mm styrodur, painted in pebble grey and drybrushed with ivory. I painted the lines in terracotta and used a cut nail as index.

 

I wanted to put some 15 mm Roman figurines as statues on the stairs and the portal roof. But the Corvus Belli minis I ordered for that purpose weren’t delivered in time.

 

At the Tactica I was asked where I bought the villa. I was so proud when I answered that I built it on my own.