Toy Soldier show preparation

Only 10 days to go to the show and I am finally getting my finger out and starting the displays. It looks like a few late nights next week.
Before I go into details about the display, can I remind anyone coming to the show wanting to get figures from us please get in touch with what you want as soon as you can as we now stock so much we can't bring everything down so to avoid disappointment give us a ring with what you want.
As I mentioned in the last post about the show, we have 30 feet of display space and I have worked out I need to do about 16 new displays for it. They are all 30cm deep and 60cm wide- big enough to get alot of figures and terrain on but small enough to put on a shelf. These boards will cover displays for the French Indian Wars, Sudan, Zulu, WW2 (Normandy, desert and Eastern front), W1, Spanish Civil War, Napoleonics (Waterloo and Russia), Crusades, American Civil  War, American War of Independence, Samurai, and  Jacobite's- so quite a range. Fortunately, nearly all f them will be on different landscapes, not involving any buildings. The one real exception is a larger layout for the First Legion World War Two display. The layout is being made for a customer in the USA who has given me the OK to use a s a display piece at the show as long as I don't sell it on the day.

basic modelling done- ready for painting

The layout needed to have lots of display space so all the great First Legion tanks could be easily displayed but he wanted some interesting background detail and available cover for the Russian AT gun. The above picture is what we came up with. The ruins either side are very simple but offer cover and the main building is just a couple of inches thick but allows figures to be placed at the windows.
The next stage is to start painting it- the model looks terrible after the first coats of paint and I always worry that my painting techniques won't work this time! So far It has always worked out OK.

basic paint job complete- YUK!

I paint everything is a basic coat- burnt sienna for bricks, raw sienna for woodwork and then in this case grey for the plaster work and brown for window frames. The whole lot then gets a wash of raw umber

Washed in raw umber

You can see that this dulls everything but helps to blend all the colours together. I tend to leave that for 24 hours to dry and then get on with dry brushing and weathering to hopefully bring the whole thing alive. As it is drying now upstairs, this is as far as I can go tonight so the plan is for an update tomorrow or Friday.
The other boards have been started as well:

groundwork done ready for painting

trampled cornfield- early stages

adding depth to the boards

The boards are all on 18mm thick MDF and I add depth to them if I want to create undulations or holes of any kind. I first make a frame and then fill it with polystyrene. Once that is done then I can shape the ground however I want. More photos tomorrow on how they are going.