Graveyard Update

Not much to report this weekend, house work and other distractions got in the way, but I did find some time to progress the graveyard pieces slightly.  

Most of the basic paint work has been completed on the stone arches, the walls and gravestones. I started with a dark grey base, as a result of the wall filler being mixed with black paint before it was used on the polystyrene.

For the stone arches I then washed over these with black ink to try and get the dark grime deep down in the stone work before painting over the top with a varying mix of grey and white. For the headstones I simply worked white paint over the top of the original grey colour of the wall filler. The other stone work and general rocks sticking out of the ground were worked with a lighter grey than the built stone structures to give some shade to the otherwise quite grey layout.

To one piece I’ve started to add some flock, this panel of the graveyard borders on the edge of the ‘cursed’ zone, so the main area is going to be flocked with green grass, and the edge where I’ve put a couple more pieces of old twig as dead trees will form the start of the area of devastation.

The twigs have been fixed in place using PVA glue and more wall filler to build up the mound around the root base.  I’ll probably be burning the tops of these as well at some point.

In the foreground the area of devastation will be a contrast to the green resting place near the entrance arches

On the other section I’ve glued some flower arranger’s oasis. I sliced this into a thin layer using a sharp kitchen knife, and then shaved the sides to form as small hill shape. The off cut pieces I glued down around the base of the larger pieces and pressed them down firmly. These then allow me to ‘plant’ trees as in this photo. I’ve a few different trees with wire trunks that can be inserted and removed from the oasis. This will allow the setting to be changed quite dramatically when finished just by the different trees I can insert into the oasis. 

I was just about to cut up another beer case, this time a Budwiser one when I noticed the competition on the side, entering a pack code on line to win. Not expecting anything I nearly just went ahead with the cutting but thought ‘what the hell’ and entered the code online. What do you know; I won a £10 prize. I’ve now got to keep the box whilst I claim. If I hadn’t kept the box for model work it would probably have already been in the recycled bin by now – so my hording has finally paid off.

Archive Collection – Stone Circle

I know I’ve shown the stone circle a couple of times but I realised that I had never actually talked about it. So, just to put the record straight or curved as the case may be here goes...

The stone circle came about around the same time as I was making the water mill when I had a lot of wall filler mixed up which I couldn’t keep. 

The question was what to do with it; I didn’t have any other models on the go at the time which were ready for wall filler to be added. Rather than waste it, I looked around for ideas as to what to do with it. I had been watching a lot of ‘Robin Of Sherwood’, and some of the scenes featured a stone circle, and with ‘Magical Ring’ and from ‘Clannad’ being one of the albums I often model to it was quite inevitable what came to mind. Oh and not to forget the ‘Doctor Who’ adventure ‘The Stones of Blood’, which must have been in the mental mix somewhere.

The base was a sheet of corrugated card board, and the stones themselves were small off cuts of foam board stuck together, some of the stones were single pieces of foam board, others would have had extra pieces stuck to them to add extra thickness in parts. These were quickly stuck down in a circle, with top pieces placed to make cap stones. I would probably have used quicker drying super glue as I had a pot of filler to use up before it set. Then I liberally plastered the mix over the arranged foam board pieces, ensuring that the surfaces had some curious textures.

Once all this had dried the base was covered with PVA glue and sprinkled with saw dust to add a first level of ground texture.

The whole lot was then painted, in those days all I was just using the Games Workshop paints, so these would have been the colours used.

Various green shades for the base, along with black, white and some of their grey mixes for the stones. Those early paints although having wonderful names were never labelled on the pots in those days, so my memory fades and some have been renamed since I believe.

Additional green flock was then added with more PVA glue, along with some scenic foliage.  I used the oasis foam for flower arranging on the front garden part of the watermill to allow model trees to be poked in at will. Small slithers of the oasis were shaved from the blocks of the foam and glued and pressed down in patches on the base of the stone circle. You can clearly see them around some of the stones where the ground work is a sort of brown-green colour and a different texture.