Over the last week I have been printing a copy of ‘The Lighthouse’ from Iain Lovecraft’s ‘Treasure Island’ Kickstarter.

Treasure Island was a Kickstarter, ran by Iain Lovecraft in February 2022. I was deeply honoured to be invited by Iain to test some of the new buildings and boats that are going to feature in the campaign.

I have printed the lighthouse on my Ender 5 using Black PLA. It has taken around 4 days to print.

The lighthouse features a crane mounted on the roof, but this can be swapped out, as shown for variety or if it is not to your taste.

The lighthouse prints in six pieces. The largest piece is the base. I printed at 0.2mm layer height with 8% infill and it took around 28 hours to print.

Mid and Top sections

Roof dome, crane and spire.

All of the pieces have incredible detail and printed easily without any supports.

The building is mainly wood and plaster so I decided that it would be a good idea to start with a base coat of Army Painter Leather Brown, as this is the starting shade that I tend to use for wood. I first primed the model using a black spray paint from Halfords Auto range. This has good fill properties and gives a good base. When this had dried, I over sprayed with the Army Painter Leather Brown Primer, from a short distance at a 45 degree angle so as to leave some black undercoat in recesses to help with shading effect.

All but the finest details on buildings are either dry or damp brushed using cheap craft paints and make up brushes which are excellent for dry-brushing and far cheaper than specific hobby alternatives.

The plaster wall are given a heavy drybrush using DecoArt Honey Brown, trying to avoid woodwork and deepest recesses.

This was followed up with a medium drybrush using Apple Barrel ‘Lite Mocha’

Finishing with a light drybrush of DecoArt ‘Oyster Beige’

The exact brands and tones are not critical… you are looking for a tonal graduation from a warm mid brown to an ‘off white’.

Although I had been as careful as I could be (with 80mm make up brushes), I had got some drybrushing over the wood work, so the next thing to do was to touch that up using Army Painter Leather Brown Acrylic.

The wooden areas were then drybrushed with a ‘mid flesh’ tone. I used a craft paint… you could use a flesh tone from any range of paint. I find this gives a good warm contrast for wood, especially when washed over with a slightly diluted wash of Army Painter Strong Tone.

Iain told me “The dome is made of Plaster and seashell cement to form the main structure and then it is covered in a plaster or adobe(Plaster with mud) to smooth the outside surface to a nice finish.”. I decided that sounded like a Terracotta shade. I do all my Spanish / Colonial Terracotta roof’s with household emulsion, as these are the best tones I’ve found after much experimenting. The paints are from Dulux, they have a nice 3 tone system which is great for base coat and drybrush application. I use Sumatran Melody 3 as the base coat. Once dry, I then drybrush over with the lighter tone Sumatran Melody 2.

To complete, I painted the Ivy with Games Workshop Contrast Dark Angels Green and the Window with Contrast Ultramarine Blue. I also applied an Army Painter Strongtone wash over the damaged section of the roof dome.

The finished model at the end of a pier. The figure is from Iain Lovecrafts previous ‘Pirates vs Cthulu’ campaign. The small boat in the background is the ‘Marsh Skipper’ which is also part of the ‘Treasure Island’ Release.

The final shot shows the Xebec from ‘Pirates vs Cthulu’ sailing past.

The Pirate Miniatures and naval cannons, designed by Iain Lovecraft are now available as 28mm metal castings in the Sally 4th Swashbuckling Adventurers range. Click here to take a look.