201 : Essling Church

Now that I had my Essling Church model assembled and textured (see Post 199) I now needed to get it painted. As I’d already painted the windows and the window recesses of the church (see Post 198) it was a simple paint job to get the walls and roofs painted. I used a variety of browns and greys for the walls and blue-greys and violet-greys for the roof tiles.

The secret to painting tabletop scenery is, of course, to always paint with a number of colours and not just one flat colour. Also to use a variety of colour and not just tints and tones of one colour. This can add some of the realism of natural materials and weathering.

The 10mm/N-scale churches I had in my collection up to now had all taken up too much space for the ground scale of my Essling village. Now I had a church model with the very small footprint – of 39mm x 60mm – that I needed.

In 1809, the church at Essling was known as the Schloßkapelle – the chapel associated with the Schloss over the road. It was built towards the end of the 18^th century. It didn’t avoid destruction during hostilities and was replaced by a new church in 1816. It has to be remembered that Essling was a battlefield all over again during the Battle of Wagram, two months after the Battle of Aspern-Essling.