Egyptian Village - Part 1

As a part of the French in Egypt project I need an Egyptian village to fight over. Plans for this have been in my head since December and a couple of weeks ago I sketched up the floor plans for three structures.

The first structure is a fairly substantial one, consisting of three parts: a two storey residence with external stairs, a smaller residence, a stable and a courtyard, all contained within an outer wall with wooden gate.

The other two are to be fairly simple, single storey structures.

I chose to start on the largest building first and quite quickly cut out and assembled the three key components from a heavy card, using matchsticks to frame the windows and make the doors.

The two-storey dwelling (with external stairs).

The single-storey dwelling (with arched doorway and stairs connecting with the roof of the larger dwelling)

And the stable

All three components dry assembled as below:

I stayed pretty much true to the original plan, although I altered some of the dimensions to constrain the overall size and dispensed with the arch in the courtyard wall.

With the cardboard forms constructed I then applied the outer finish. For this I used the artist modelling compound that I use for basing figures, with a few pinches of fine sand added for texture. I applied this with a pallette knife and left to dry.

I then glued the three pieces together.

Next I glued the whole structure to a base and added the courtyard walls.

I added the front gate then the whole structure was  painted with the same sand colour I used for my French in Egypt bases and washed with a thinned down coat of GW Seraphin Sepia. The doors and window frames were painted and the window cavaties blackened. Finally I drybrushed the whole model with two lightened shades of GW Tallard Sand, the second shade being almost white. Then a few water stains and  it was finished.

So for this village, one model down, two to go.