Fly's Studio: Part 8 - The Sign

Last summer, I began chronicling how I prepped and painted Fly's Studio from Old Glory's line of 25mm Western buildings. I enjoyed the project, learning a great deal usually from mistakes. Even though I declared the project finished in Part 7 , I always knew it wasn't. Two unfinished bits have been bugging me: the building needed a sign and it needed porch roof posts.

As in all the older Old Glory buildings in their Western line, the main roof over the building, the building's upper false front, and the porch roof are one solid piece, forcing the porch roof to sit on any posts I might add. A year ago, I avoided adding the roof posts because I was unsure how to add them, afraid they would break off during a game. Building the Hartley House project taught me otherwise. It also taught me to paint the posts before gluing them in place--a mistake I will not make again!

But this article isn't about adding the roof posts. This article is about adding a sign. So let's get to it!

A Bit Of Tombstone History
Camillus Fly was a frontier photographer during the height of the Wild West in the late 1800's . He spent the best years of his career living in Tombstone, AZ, where he ran the small photography gallery in the above photo. The building entered into legend after the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in a 15-foot-wide empty lot between Fly's building and the Harwood House.

Comparing the vintage photo of the real photography gallery to Old Glory's model, you can see the Old Glory building only has a passing resemblance to it. This doesn't bother me one bit, since I'm not modeling the city of Tombstone.

Freehand v Transfers v Photo?
You might notice that Fly had his "sign" painted onto the building's false front, a common practice at the time. For the past year, I debated if I wanted to hand paint my sign on the Old Glory model. One slip of the brush, however, would ruin the entire model! So hand painting a sign was out of the question.

I then considered using dry transfer lettering, which I've done before on other models. Unfortunately, finding Western-looking dry transfer lettering is difficult in my area and online. What I did find was a too expensive. So no dry transfers this time.

Instead, I settled on using a photo of a real sign. After searching the Internet, I came across the sign you see here. It's a photo of a real sign from a real building, but not the real Fly's Photography Gallery. It's a sneaky imitation trading on the famous name--perfect for me! So in my world of Gun Town, the gallery belongs to the second-rate photographer Martin Fly, Camillus Fly's distant cousin. Like any good greedy relative with little talent of his own, Martin relies on his cousin's famous name for an income.

Resize The Sign The Right Way
Loading the sign into Paint Shop Pro, I cleaned up the original photo until all that remains is what you see here. I then shrank it to fit the model.

The first instinct many people have is to hit the "resize" button to shrink an image. Don't do this!!! Don't even use the higher quality "bilinear resample" function to resize the image. Both techniques will compress the image leaving squiggly "artifacts" in it--not good when printing signs.

Instead, increase the photo's dots per inch, its DPI. The higher the DPI, the smaller the photo will print while keeping the text sharp without artifacts. I knew I wanted my sign to print at a specific size in inches, so I increased the DPI from 72 upwards, clicking the DPI button until it matched the printed size I wanted. The photo above is the actual gif I printed. I left the ball trim in place in case people would like it.

Print The Sign
I printed the sign on good plain paper using the high quality setting on my printer. Since the paper needed more thickness to look like wood, I glued it to a handy scrap of thick cardstock. This combination looked better than printing the sign directly to cardstock printer paper, which still would have been too thin.





Trim The Bottom Of The Sign
Using a steel ruler, I trimmed the straight bottom section of the sign. Cutting this portion of the sign before gluing it to the cardstock is easier I feel. I then freehand cut the "Gallery" portion of the sign using a sharp Xacto knife. I tried keeping the small balls in each corner but decided to cut them off. Freehand cutting a teeny circle is difficult!





Glue The Sign To Cardboard
Next, I sprayed the back of the sign with 3M Super 77 glue. Super 77 may be a bit more expensive but is the best spray glue out there. I aligned the bottom of the sign with the straight cut on the cardstock and pressed it in place.








Trim The Entire Sign
Using the metal ruler and Xacto knife, I then trimmed the entire sign.








Color The Edges
Once the glue dried, I trimmed the entire sign. Since I didn't want the white edges of the paper showing, I grabbed a colored pencil ("carmine") that matched the sign's color. Believe it or not, I bought the pencil in the photo is 30 years ago!





Affix The Sign
I did not glue the sign to the building. Instead I used small bits of blue tack to affix the sign to the building. The tack holds the sign perfectly while allowing me to swap it out with other signs when needed. Nifty, eh?

I experimented with putting the sign on the false front and hanging it from the porch roof. I like both ways. Affixing it to the false front, however, might be safer during a game than affixing it to the porch roof. We'll see how it holds up either way. (You can also see the new posts test-fitted in the right-hand photo. I'm also finishing the bases on my Western figures this weekend, so no more 'naked' metal!)





Conclusion
Printing your own custom signs is easy and adds realism to buildings with little work. Some modelers are taking photos of actual buildings, scaling them to size, printing them on photo paper, and creating actual models that look amazingly real. A couple fellows are building an entire HO layout of modern Miami this way!

Fly's Studio: Part 7 - Finished Product

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

Wow, it's been one year since I began this series! I finished the building last Autumn, but was only able to take some decent photos recently.

The Finished Product
I wanted the false-front to look maintained with a fairly fresh coat of buff paint. After all, this was the part folks saw from the street. I wanted the sides to look more worn down, with the paint wearing away. Overall, I think I achieved it. I omitted roof posts because I was afraid they would break off. I wish the roof section lifted off, not the top half of the building. In hindsight, I could have pinned and then epoxied the posts to the floor. Oh well. Next time I'll do that. I still have to add some signs and other details, which I'll do as well.

Lessons Learned
I learned a great deal with this project that I will be taking onto other projects. I've learned that I'm not a fan of interior detailed buildings, though I still have a few more of those type of buildings to do. On future buildings, I want to lighten the look, make the wood more faded than on this one. I think I'll make bases for the buildings as well.

What other Old Glory Western projects are on my table? The Harwood House is primed, and I've figured out an easy way to fix the badly molded roof so it fits level on the building. (More on that in another post.) The sheriff's building, the OK Corral horse pen, the tented roof building, and some outhouses are also primed. These are my summer projects.

Overall, this was a fun and frustrating project. I hope you enjoyed it and learned a few techniques as well--what to do and not to do based on my experiences!

Fly's Studio: Part 6 - Exterior Trim

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

Due to my schedule this week, this will be a short installment today. After painting the base color on the exterior walls and the floor, I drybrushed the trim using Americana Avocado Green. I want the side windows and trim to look like the owner gave them one coat of paint and then ignored them, while maintaining the paint on the false front. I will paint the sides of the shingles dark gray once I work on the roof. I chose the lighter, faded look of Avocado Green because the front trim will be a dark green against a light tan. The interior trim will be the same dark green with most likely buff walls.

Fly's Studio: Part 5 - Exterior Wood

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

This installment details painting the base coat on the wooden exterior walls. I'm trying to make a building that looks uncared for on the sides but looks good from the street, just like many real boomtown buildings did.

Step 1: Drybrush Americana Burnt Umber
Using my soft cat's tongue brush, I gave all the exterior walls a heavy drybrushing of burnt umber, which is a dark brown color. Because I plan on painting the facade a buff color with deep green trim, I left it black. Remember to drybrush the wood behind the roof's facade, along the roof, and behind the roof.


At first, I ignored the doors and windows. I figured I would drybrush them with a green, so I really didn't need to bother painting them brown. After some thought, I realized I wanted some of the wood's aged brown to show through, so I quick drybrushed the trim burnt umber as well. I also drybrushed the wood on the porch roof sides but realized that I had wasted my time. Later, I will paint the wood the same color as the facade. Oh well. Live and learn.


Finally, I drybrushed the interior floor and porch burnt umber as well. In later installments, you will see my frustration painting the floor. Like I mention in the introduction, you will get to see my success as well as mistakes. Luckily, some mistakes work out for the better!


Final Thoughts
If you like, you can stop right here and have a nice looking building. All you would have to do is finish the roof, facade, interior walls, and doors. Of course, I didn't stop here. In Part 6, I'll show how I painted the trim a faded "vomit green" (my son's description) and gave the building a more weathered look, with individually worn boards.

Fly's Studio: Part 4 - Painting The Stones

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

In this installment, I paint the stone foundation.For me, painting buildings is one of the most relaxing parts of the hobby. My main process for painting these Western buildings will be drybrushing. I don't have to worry about being exact, the process is quick, and if I don't like something I just paint it black and start again. Repainting rarely happens.

Step 1: Primer Touch-Up
After the gesso dried a couple days, I came back today and touched up any areas the primer missed, hitting them with a dab of black craft paint. Here you can see the building wall, a nice solid black.


Step 2: Drybrush Americana Graphite
I began giving the stone foundation a heavy drybrush of Americana Graphite, making sure to get some in the massive spaces between the stones but leaving quite a bit of black for deep shadow. This is my base dark gray. Don't worry about getting paint on the wooden walls. It will happen, as the photos show. Because I easily can touch up the primed walls, I do the foundation first.


Step 3: Drybrush Americana Neutral Grey
Every step of drybrushing is lighter than the previous. Not just in color, but in application. Again, don't worry if some areas are darker or lighter than others. Mistakes are good at this point! The one photo shows the contrast between the Graphite and Neutral Grey.


Step 4: Drybrush Americana Slate Grey
Again, a ligher gray and a lighter touch. My camera setup isn't professional, so the subtleties might not show up as well as they do in person.


Step 5: Drybrush Americana Grey Sky
A very light drybrush of Slate Grey to pick out highlights.


Step 6: Drybrush Ceramcoat Antique White
The final drybrush is a very light and random drybrush of Antique White to pick out the top highlights of the rock. Never use pure white because it is too stark. Antique White has a buff tinge, dulling it.

Step 7: Touch Up Black
The final step is to touch up the wood with black. Because I will be handling the building during the painting process, I'll let the paint dry a while before I continue. Plus it gives me time to write this article.


Final Thoughts
At this stage, the stones look good but still a bit "clean." When I am done with the entire building, I will come back and muddy up the foundation and the bottoms of the walls slightly. That will tie it all together, making it look realistic. If I didn't stop to take photos and answer the phone several times, the whole process would have taken no more than thirty minutes. Not too bad for a Friday morning! Now to eat lunch. I'm not sure if I'll continue working on this today. I also have to finish my 15mm Peter Pig WWII guys. I'll keep you posted.

Fly's Studio: Part 3 - Primer

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

This afternoon here in Seminole County, Florida, we're getting our typical heavy thunderstorm. The lights flicker and windows rattle with nearly every lightning strike. (Left: Actual radar image after the brunt of the storm had past our area, allowing me to turn on the computer.) Of course, I want to prime my models but can't go into the garage. I'd be spray painting in 100% humidity. Even before the storm the humidity level was 66%. What's a Central Floridian to do in the middle of summer? Whip out the handy bottle of black Liquitex gesso!

During the storm, I primed the building using a Blumenthal #5 brush reserved for this purpose. I simply glop it onto the building, work the gesso into the cracks and crevices, and make sure not to have huge puddles of it anywhere. Because the gesso will shrink and harden as it dries, you really don't have to worry about applying it evenly like normal paint. In fact, you don't want it too thin due to the shrinkage. When people ask how I paint it on, I always say "glop it."

I prime nearly everything using black or gray gesso, from 10mm to 28mm figures. I do not prime my Aeronef ships and microarmor with gesso, spraying those instead. Gesso loses little detail when it shrinks, but I want as thin a coat of primer as possible on those ultra-small models.

Well, those are the Fly's Studio updates for today. I have to wait 24 hours at least for the gesso to dry and harden. In the meantime, I'll be working on the paint scheme I want to use. I'm pretty sure I want the sides to be worn, bare wood like my Arnica shack I posted a while ago but with a worn, painted front. I'll keep you posted.

Fly's Studio: Part 2 - Prep Work

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

In Part 1 of this series, I mention how I had just started cleaning up the building. Today, I show some of the work I did to clean up one of the door openings.

The first photo in this series shows the right side wall of the studio. It has a large window and a door. Prior to taking these photos, I had already cleaned up the window. It had looked just like the door, with thick resin covering the opening and large glops of resin clogging in the corners. I took photos of the inside and the outside to show the extent of the resin, not only around the door but also around the corner posts.

First, I punched out the resin sheet covering the opening, puncturing it with my file and then breaking off as much as possible. After that, I began cutting and chipping down the remaining resin, using one of my disposable knives. I was not going to waste expensive Exacto blades doing this. In the one photo below, you can see me cutting down the excess resin.

Safety Alert!!! When cutting the resin like this, little bits will fly everywhere. Though I always wear an optivisor over my glasses when working on models, I thought would be safe. I was wrong! A chip flew up under the hood and into my left eye. Luckily, I was able to remove the chip with a q-tip, an unpleasant experience. After that, I grabbed my safety glasses. My optivisor fits over the glasses easily. Filing the resin also creates fine dust, so be sure to keep everything away from your workspace, especially digital cameras. Yes, I learned the hard way about that as well. Safe from flying debris, I continued scraping.

After I scraped and chipped the resin away, I then filed the opening and wall boards as smooth as possible. Using my triangular hobby file, I filed out the slats between the boards so the slats ran all the way to the roof. Using a hobby pick, I also cleaned out any globs from inside the slats. Finally, I chipped away any excess resin from the door trim. The photo below shows the finished doorway.

Once I trimmed and filed the excess resin off the entire building, a process which took me about 90 minutes, I scrubbed the roof and building parts in hot soapy water. This step is important because you must remove all the mold release agent, resin dust, and other dirt. When I finished washing the parts, the water was dark gray. If that isn't proof enough, I don't know what is.

Final Thoughts: The building took more work than I would have liked, with the cutting and scraping bothering my hands. I have bone defects in my hands, so too much twisting and pinching causes pain. Sometimes the pain can linger for days. (This is why I must buy miniatures free of excessive flash and mold lines.) I will finish the other Old Glory buildings and scenery bits I purchased, but I will not be buying any more. I like them, but not that much.

As I type this, the building is air-drying. Next step is priming. I'm looking forward to painting this building, but I'm not sure what I will make it. I just now got an idea for "modular" signs. Change the sign, change the building. One day a bank, the next day a dry goods store. Hmmmm.... Something to think about. I'll keep you posted.

Fly's Studio: Part 1 - The Parts

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

On May 31 I placed a large order with Old Glory, taking advantage of their 60% off cowboy sale. My box weighed 14 pounds! Along with many West Wind cowboy figures, I ordered several buildings, including a newer modular building and some older resin buildings. The first building on my worktable is Fly's Studio (MW101), a nice small building with a real boomtown look to it. Though concerned that it would be scaled for the smaller 25mm Old Glory Warpaint cowboys, I quickly discovered that it scales perfectly with all my West Wind Victorian and Western figures. It also fits in well with my Arnica buildings. Would I pay $32.50 retail for this building? No. For the price I did pay, I would have liked another. My town of Guntown needs all the buildings it can get!

The Components
When I ordered the kit, I expected it to come with walls and roof sections that I had to assemble. This is how my Arnica buildings came, as well as every model railroad building I have ever assembled. I was surprised that the building has only two basic parts: the building itself and the roof. It also comes with an interior wall that slips into recesses in the base board. Yes, the interior walls and floor are detailed, a nice touch. Rounding out the components are three solid metal doors (I only picture two here) and two thin dowels representing porch posts.

The doors are slightly shorter than the doorways, but this doesn't detract from the kit. I could easily scratchbuild some doors, making a front door with a window unlike the included metal version, but I'll stick to the included versions.

The dowels, however, need to go. They just do not work as porch posts. I will either construct new posts out of styrene or simply leave the off. For ease of play, I am leaning toward leaving them off. I know that within 10 minutes on the table, I will bump my figure into them or drop the roof on them, snapping them off at the base. (Yes, I am slowly overcoming the model railroad detail freak in me and becoming a gamer!)

Prep Work
As soon as I inspected the Old Glory buildings, I realized that the resin would take some serious clean up work. Not to insult Old Glory, which makes a fine produce, but I expected this. My Arnica buildings, on the other hand, had literally no flash and dried goop to scrape. I figure a bit of roughness in the model will add to Guntown's hardscrabble look.

Today, I cleaned the roof and the front as best I could. Later this week I will finish cleaning the building, wash it, and then prime it with black gesso. In Part 2, I'll explain why I choose gesso over black spray primer.