Michael Robert wrote:Wonderful result, Steve,
and really good to see the steps.
Thank you, it's not done yet - so much more to do round this project - new steps (that fit), and a backer board to the church to strengthen the whole thing and enable me to take it to the wargames club safely - when that begins again.
Michael Robert wrote:The building has a strong Italian character to me, not French and not Spanish neither such as the picture you show. So what are the King's musketeers doing there? ... very curious about the story
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Strangely enough I had this conversation earlier this evening. My friend has been following my build pictures on Facebook and we talked about it when he rang today.
What I was looking for when I was trying to find a picture to work from, was a prototype which I could build, which wouldn't dominate the whole table, have a nice enough facade that said "church" so that people would know instantly what it was, and which - and this was probably what guided me most - would fit in with the style of the 1974 Musketeers films.
The Red Box and Ultima Ratio figures are deeply rooted in the style of these films (and they are films that I personally love), even down to there being figures which are identifiable as actors from the films. This has been central to my thinking about the way I paint, and model the figures and scenery.
Initially I looked at pictures of churches in Paris.
Saint Roche
St Peter, Montmartre
St Etienne
The style features that struck me immediately were the three doors - one large central door and two smaller, the niches, the use of false columns and the 'squareness' of the facades, which are all very different to English churches. These are key features.
St Paul, Montmartre was a strong possibility, it was old enough, and simple enough, but then someone in one of my Facebook groups posted this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp5-ERRbUNQ
Not only did it have those important features but it had human figures standing in front of it which would allow me to scale the images and get measurements off.
As you pointed out it looks Italian, (it IS about as Italian as you can get,) but to me it was Just what I was looking for. There were features on the facade that I knew I was never going to be able to reproduce, but it was a very good place to start. I also knew that I had to build it with what I had to hand (to make sure that it got completed) so I would have to compromise on some of the niches with what would have been smaller than life size statues. Hence the one statue of St Martin that looks a bit like Charlton Heston as the Cardinal Richelieu, but my friend agrees with me that it looks okay for my musketeers. (He also suggested I build some film cameras to complete the street scenery, sometimes I have to NOT listen to him.)
Hope this was useful, Steve.