Project Round Up – Easter Monday

Well, the Easter holiday is nearly over, at least I have managed to get some model work done each day. Today was quite a busy day model wise, with the sun shining down and ‘Big Finish Doctor Who’ audio book CDs playing in the background I got quite a lot completed.

Castle Ruins – Castle Entrance.

The left hand side of the entrance has now been completed, leaving only a small part of the roof near the murder holes to be completed before I start painting.

Castle Ruins – Partial Room.

This is the last piece of the castle ruins that I had originally planned, and I had the polystyrene skeleton cut out for a while now.

This piece gives me a partial room with a doorway, on a higher level, with a set of steps leading up. The steps have been built from odd pieces of polystyrene, glued in a spiral set of steps, once covered in wall filler these will be much sturdier than they are now.

I have reinforced the top level join with a couple of cocktail sticks inserted into the top step and the main body piece. 

Today I started to cover the first couple of walls then decided that the whole thing was too box shaped still so broke out two lumps from the remaining sides.

I think this will give a better result in the end. These odd pieces will be made up to be small wall fragments for general placement on the overall layout.

Coffee Stick Ghost Town.

After looking at the paintwork from yesterday I decided that the models did not need a second coat of burnt umber before I added the lighter shading, so I started today with a 50–50ish mix of Wilkio’s Burnt Umber and Americana’s Desert Sand.  Both are acrylic based paints. I picked up several different bottles of Americana paint from a recent clearance sale at the local branch of Hobbycraft. (I try to pay regular visits to as many hobby shops that have clearance bins, as you never know what you might find.)

I lightly coated the two models with this lighter brown mix, then once dry I dry brushed with the same acrylic white I bought at the local pound store which I’ve been using on the castle ruins to give that aged weathered look to the wood work.

These two models have come out a lot darker than the original two coffee stick buildings I made; I actually prefer this colour scheme and will probably keep to this when I make a few more of these models. I think the town needs a few extract smaller models to go along with the three large ones that dominate the one smaller model at the moment.

All these models have had their windows painted black; this is quite a neutral design so that I can always add additional effects later.

After, I gave all four of the coffee stick ghost town buildings a quick spray with Games Workshop’s purity seal. The other two have been waiting a while over winter for their spray, as I try to do this outside when the weather is better.

Home Grown Log Cabins

Stick with me on this one – the model work had to take a back seat this weekend as the garden really had to have some attention paid to it. From these before and after shots you’ll see why.

However, notice the dead wood in the before picture – I have some Golden Rod and Michealmass Dasiy growing in the garden, when they die back they leave long, thin, straight canes.

I’ve cleared up last year’s dead wood and whilst doing so had an idea. Log cabin models.

I’ve left the best of the sticks to dry out properly but I’ve made a mock up to see if they might work. Looking at the model below I think it might actually work. Not sure about painting them up yet but I'll use this test model to see what happens.

So now I’m not only recycling old rubbish to make terrain I’ve started to grown my own as well.

I’ll report back with results later.

Castle Ruins - Tunnel Entrance and Layout

Time has been against me again this week when it came to model work, but with a sunny Sunday afternoon here I managed to get a couple of hours in the garden to work on the castle ruin entrance tunnel.

You might recall when I first got hold of the large pieces of polystyrene I said to look at them from every direction before cutting them up.  During my examination I noticed a section that would make a great tunnel or passage way.

Using the  hot wire cutter I removed this section. This gives me two sides, with pillars, and a roof. You might notice that the original packing had taken some damage – this happened when I was trying to get the polystyrene home last November during a blizzard, gripping hard onto the large pieces trying to escape in the driving snow my grip broke some chunks off. Anyway it will all add to the final effect.

I’ve now managed to cover the inside of the tunnel (sides and roof) with filler and I’ve carved the stone work in. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to get the outside finished and then painted.

Working outside today I got the first chance in a while to lay out all the finished pieces made for the castle ruin set so far. Here are a few pictures of just one configuration of the pieces.

Dungeon Extras

Not had much time this week to work on the many projects I have on the go at the moment, just had time to add a few extra accessory pieces for the dungeon set.

Having left the inside archways clear of wall filler, so that initially I could add back in the original cut out arch shapes also disguised with wall filler to block them up as either solid walls or secret doors, I took advantage of the easy to cut exposed polystyrene.

I cut a channel up both sides of the arch way using a sharp craft knife, making the channel thick enough to slide a piece of card into the slot.

Having cut the card to size I then covered the card with strips of thin wood – back to using the coffee stirring sticks. Once the first layer was dry, I attached a few additional pieces along the top, and sides, and down the middle to give the effect of double doors. These were given a black under coat with acrylic paint and then painted up with a brown colour layer and a quick white dry brushing to add aging.

I repeated the channel cuts in one of the other archways and again cut a piece of card to fit. This time I stuck two thin strips of card down the middle of the base card then covered the card with a piece of foil paper.

I stuck this down, allowing the strips of card to bulge through to look like iron work. Along the top and bottom I glued additional pieces of silver foil, this time with a pitted effect already in the material to look like huge hinges.

Once this was dry, I painted the whole thing with black paint then dabbed it off using a piece of kitchen towel – this gave the whole mottled effect. 

* Can you guess where the two pieces of foil came from?

Finally I made a rock fall piece to fit into one of the archways. This was made from one old wine cork – the old cork kind not the new modern plastic corks.

I broke the cork into pieces and glued it together in a heap shape using a piece of card as the base.  Make sure that any flat sides are on the inside and that the rough broken parts are facing outward.

As you can see this still need to be finished off with a touch of paint to blend it in.

Full set of pieces for the dungeon archways

* The iron door covering came from the top seal of a Pringle’s tube – silver side out

The pitied foil was from the edge of a dissolvable aspirin strip.

Scenic Terrain – Rocks

Ok, a quick post tonight. I recall saying recently not to throw away that tub of dried up wall filler you found at the back of the shed when you went looking for something to build the castle ruins with.

When I went to start these building projects I did just that, went to find some previously bought filler only to find it had dried out and formed a solid lump in the bottom of the tub.

Just before I threw it out a thought struck me and I turned the tub upside down and struck it with a hammer, knocking the solid lump out. It fell out and broken into three large pieces and several smaller fragments. I collected up the larger lumps and the best of the other pieces.

Having come from the bottom of the tub, the pieces all had nice flat bases to them.  This meant they sat nicely on the table, and from the front had great rock structure.

The backs were smooth from the tub walls, but never the less; they formed great free-standing corner rock pieces for quick distribution onto the game table as rocky terrain.

I gave the pieces an undercoat with black acrylic paint then later once that had dried I used a black/white mix in various shades of gray to colour and highlight and a hint of brown in flashes across the rocks to appear like seams of other rock (or maybe even fool’s gold) in the structure.

One of the smaller pieces had a nice round dip in it, this I filled with a bright blue paint to look like a small rock pool. This took a bit longer to dry.   

I might even go back and use some of the water effect material on them later to really bring up the effect. (If I do I’ll let you know how it works out.)   

   

All in all, rather than throwing away what was going to be wasted wall filler, I ended up with extra rocky terrain for use in our underground cavern adventure.