Misty Halloween Greetings

It’s that time of year again when the ghosts, ghouls and creeps haunt the streets, including Big Lee apparently with his very own home grown pumpkin head. 

I decorated the porch and dished out some treats, although my first caller was a salesperson for Sky TV. (Probably the scariest costume to be honest.)

Anyway, as I was putting up the fake spider web material bought for Halloween decoration I realised it would be ideal to achieve something I had previously tried with cotton wool but had not been happy with the results. 

I wanted some spooky mist and fog to roll in over the graveyard set and the consistency of this material when stretched out gave the perfect results. Plus, with Halloween now over for another year, there's a good chance you'll be able to pick this stuff up in a sale.

Here’s Karl and his brother Tomkin exploring the graveyard as the Halloween fog rolls in.

Also I’d like to share the response I received from Woodland Scenics following my last post, which raises them even higher in my opinion.

“We appreciate the support of our customers, want them to succeed and are delighted to assist with any issues they may have. We have a great Product Development team, who are dedicated to making modelers successful! Thanks for the support, Derek and for the shout-out on you blog.”

Model Work in October Sunshine

We’ve had some very unseasonal weather in London and the South of England this week, which meant that at the start of October I’m working outside with sun block on, and the shade up building models. It’s was reported that yesterday was the hottest October day on record. I managed to get some model work done today. Here’s a quick update, it’s good to be back on the model work.

The coffee stick house built from the recycled boxes is now fully covered in sticks, and has been given a black undercoat.

Zandina’s house, which can be used as a mansion or manor house has been quite well built up today. The last of the wood work has been added, and the base and front towers have been built using the DAS putty to form stone based front, the rest of the panels were again built with wall filler

I also managed to get some decoration on one of the graveyard panels.

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.

The Old Graveyard

To go with the ruined church piece I decided to start making some tile pieces, that when put together will form an old graveyard. These can be used to make up a diorama of an old churchyard or arranged in different configurations to give different graveyards in different locations, some more run down than others. 

I’m basing the various concepts on some of the older graveyards locally, and the graveyards featured in Vampire Diaries Series 1, and various episodes of Supernatural. 

I started by finishing off the church ruin itself, where some of the filler had formed small lumps I decided to paint these up as mould growing on the ruins. These were painted using Games Workshop’s Bleached Bone and Bubonic Brown, and Americana’s Deep Periwinkle.

With two pieces of card and some small cut up pieces of polystyrene from the washing machine packaging I started to layout the first two tiles of the graveyard. The first has a large double arched entrance way now slightly collapsing and some random external wall pieces. The other is more interior, with mainly graves in various states of disrepair and some at an angle implying subsistence.

These I then covered in wall filler, but this time before plastering it on I mixed it with some PVA glue and black acrylic paint giving a very dark grey initial effect to base material before I started. This will make the stonework look very different to the walls of church itself.

To layout the actual grave areas I’ve added some light stony areas. (Talus by Woodland Scenics, Fine Natural.)