bonejack

A blog about miniature wargaming, with a focus on painting and terrain modeling.

[bonejack]

Hi, I absolutely love your work. I really like the feral warpwolf you posted in 2012. Any chance you have a clearer photo of the face? Specifically I'm struggling to recreate the glowing eye effect, I'm using blue Vallejo ink. Have you used a blue ink before? Any guidance would be appreciated. Keep up the great work. Thanks.

Hello! Thanks for the nice compliment!

The Feral Warpwolf was the first model I ever attempted the "glowing eyes" effect upon. The effect is actually a bit more subtle (and convincing!) in person... some combination of my fluorescent lamp and iPhone camera make the area appear brighter than it appears to the naked eye.

I have this figure in a display case nearby, so I will take it out and try to get a better shot of the face for the site. I'll use a better camera. Look for that picture in a couple of days.

As for the blue ink: I've not tried using blue ink. I am fairly new to inks and, as I said, this Warpwolf was the first project where I tried to use ink to do something that's difficult to do with paints. I think it worked out well, but beyond what I wrote when I painted that model I don't have any more insight. I reckon I need to keep trying, though.

Here's the step-by-step method I outlined in the article about the Warpwolf:

"For the glow effect I mixed P3 yellow ink with matte medium and used this mixture to make glowing highlights on the eye socket areas. There was some trial and error here but I ended up feeling that 2 parts matte medium to 1 part ink gave me the best control over the application and dried with the appropriate translucency. I applied three successive layers of this stuff, each layer smaller than the previous so that the effect was brightest right around the eyes since they’re the source of the light."

[bonejack]

Ruined Cabin: Part II

With the basic structure of the cabin done, I cut a bean-shaped platform out of MDF. I'll plop the cabin onto the base and add some groundwork.

I had an idea that the cabin had a dirt floor when it was in use, and the former interior still has a dirt floor that's blended with grass. I also put down a cover of earth-tone foam turf to serve as a base for all of the growth.

The cabin mounted. Now I begin detailing the base

In this photo you can see unsightly spots where the super glue I used to glue the boards together bled through and stained the wood. I was pretty sure this was going to happen but I couldn't tell just how badly this was going to work out until the glue was totally dry. So, it sucks but I'm going to roll with it.

Next time I'll build a basic frame for the structure and glue the exterior boards to the framing, hiding all of the glue spots.

To begin detailing the 'yard' around the front of the cabin, I sprinkled some dead leaf cover right up against the building. I'm going to put some scrub brush up against the building and this layer of dead leaves underneath should help make the brush look several seasons old.

I also started applying some fresh green grass turf that I'll continue to blend into the scrubbier earth turf:

Some dead leaves up against the house will be a base for shrubbery

I made one of my usual mistakes here- I worked for a long time in between taking photos. I basically finished the entire outdoor scenery without taking any step-by-step photos. 

The exterior scenery in place.

I can talk through what I did, though:

The brush that skirts the entire building is Woodland Scenics "foliage". It's polyfiber with some ground foam attached to resemble foliage. I liked working with this stuff... you rip a bit off of the wad that comes in the package and stretch it out to the desired size, shape and foliar density. I ran this foliage all the way around the base of the building and allowed it to 'climb' up in a couple of places.

In the center there's a flowery climbing bush. This is a slightly darker color of Woodland Scenics polyfiber foliage that I spritzed with some scenic cement and sprinkled with Scenic Express flowers. The 'flowers' are actually tiny clusters of what appears to be ground plastic. The effect is really nice, I'm happy with the flowers.

I also glued a few bits of blue flower to a little green stem of grass to make a random wildflower poking up the building. Probably could have done without it, I think wildflowers need to appear in groups of various colors to not look weird. One by itself looks weird.

At the front corner is a small sprig of Army Painter "Poison Ivy" that I glued up the side of the building. 

I also did some additional turf blending to soften the transition from the fresh green grass to the more yellow earth-tone turf.

Now let's have a look at the other side!

The inside of the cabin features dirt, dead plants and broken wood

Again I just worked the entire inside without taking pictures. Back here you can see a lot of the wooden planks that used to make up the cabin. At the far left there is a section of wall that I embedded in the grass and turf. This was simply achieved by gluing this piece down before adding any of the ground cover materials.

The other pieces of broken wood don't have the same great appearance of working their way down into the earth over time. They're clearly just sitting right on top of the turf. I did this on purpose so that I'd understand the difference between the two approaches. I wish I would have put all of the wood down before the ground cover. I really like the embedded look. Oh well!

There's also a fallen door in the center of the scene with some dead shrubbery under it. The dead sticks are just plain old coconut hair rolled up into a tangle and flattened. Good stuff, that coconut hair.

At the far right is a little bush with pink flowers. I took a medium-sized chunk of green foam, dipped it into scenic cement and sprinkled it with Noch foliage and Scenic Express flowers. The combination of tiny leaves and tiny flowers make this a very convincing looking little plant. Another success! Also, Noch foliage is a fantastic product.

I rounded things out by placing some random spots of fresh green grass and blending them out into the surrounding earth tone turf.

There's those damn super glue spots again!!!@!

Next up: Final, fine details

[bonejack]

Ruined Cabin: Part I

I received a big box of fun scale hobby supplies this week! I cooked up a little weekend project to let me use as much of my new stuff as possible, especially scale lumber.

I decided to finally take a stab at building a structure. To make things a bit easier I decided that the structure will be a ruined cabin with only two walls left standing. The rest of the building will be collapsed and the whole thing sits on a patch of earth overgrown with brush and vines.

I'm building the cabin out of basswood strips, cut down into pieces of scale lumber. I cut 3/16" x 1/16" basswood strips into planks ranging from 1/4 inch to 2 inches in length. 

Chop, chop, chop...

Using "The Chopper II" to cut basswood strips into scale lumber

By the way, this cutting tool is called "The Chopper II" by a small US company called "NorthWest Short Line". I suppose that's already abundantly clear. I received this cutter today and I already firmly believe that anyone working with strip softwood or styrene should own one.

OOPS

I was so excited to use my new chopper that I forgot to do some detail work on my wood strips before chopping them down. Another new tool is the 'wood grain enhancing tool' from Micro-Mark. It's a soldering iron with a thin, flat, serrated tip that cuts/burns a simulated grain into pieces of wood.  

The wood grain enhancing tool. Note that the tip is finely serrated

NOTE: The above photo is staged to show off the tip of the woodgrain tool. None of the wood pieces have been detailed yet, so make note of how clear and featureless the basswood planks are before they are textured.

The oops: If I had remembered to burn the wood grain while the basswood strips were still 12 inches long I would have been done in no time. But I had already chopped up the strips (AND I was out of basswood) so I had to run the woodgrain tool over dozens of tiny strips one-by-one:

Scale bits of lumber with freshly-burned wood grain and knothole details

Each little plank now has a burned-in woodgrain texture. I also used a corner of the blade to burn some knotholes and other imperfections into a few pieces.

Dry-fitting the planks

My ruined 'cabin' is only going to have two real walls, one long and one short. I did a dry-fit to double check the size and shape of the two walls that I'm building:

Dry-fitting the parts to figure out how they will be glued

This is how I want the two walls to look. I left spaces for windows that I think will probably either be shuttered or have boards nailed over them. In this photo you can see how much realism the woodgrain tool brings to my wooden planks.

But, we're making a ruined cabin...

One of my most exciting new toys is a product called "Weather It" from Micro-Mark. It's a water-based solution that incites a chemical reaction in raw wood to give it the dull and dry silver-gray look of advanced age. I'm really excited to try it out!

There are a lot of options for applying Weather It. Since I have a lot of small pieces I decided to pour a bit of the solution into a beaker and dunk all of my loose parts:

My scale lumber planks take a dunk in 'Weather It' wood weathering solution

I sloshed these guys around for about thirty seconds and then removed them to dry. Drying seems a crucial part of this process since Weather It isn't strictly a coloring agent like a stain or paint, it's actually reacting with the wood. You can't judge the results until the pieces have dried.

It took two full dunk-and-dry cycles to get the wood looking as old and crusty as I wanted.

I'm sneaking in a little review here: 'Weather It' is an amazing product. The results are fantastic. If you use wood in your scale modeling you should probably have some of this stuff.

A final dry-fit and gluing

I gathered up all of the dry and weathered planks and dry-fit them once again to build the two main walls of my cabin. I have been worrying about how best to glue them together.

I decided to age the wood before gluing it together because spots of glue on the wood would prevent Weather It from soaking in and doing its job, leaving odd spots of pristine wood. Instead I plan to glue the finished planks together with small dots of CA glue and risk some discoloration where the glue soaks into the wood.

A final dry-fit of the weathered planks. Time to glue the walls together.

Next up, gluing and standing up the cabin!

[bonejack]

Custom Wire Tree: Part II

In the previous update I said I was going to bulk up the tree and texture it some more before I painted it. The more I looked at it, the more convinced I became that it already had acceptable 'tree' texture. It's still oddly proportioned but also still looks like a tree that could actually exist. So I decided to just paint what I have.

I went with a simple prime/drybrush/drybrush scheme:

Our tree with Vallejo Surface Primer (Black)

Drybrush pass #1: P3 Umbral Umber

Drybrush #2: P3 Gun Corps Brown

The result is what I'd call "adequate". Painting definitely helped but I was mistaken about the texture- The tree certainly needs a more 'barky' texture applied before painting. I'll take care of that on the next tree.

The paint scheme is uninspired. Just a two-tone brown drybrush. I probably could have used a bit of grey-green in the mix to give the tree a more rotten and weathered look.

I think I'm going to parlay this tree into a finished piece of scenery by building a little base around the bottom and draping moss from the limbs. 

[bonejack]

Custom Wire Tree: Part I

I've been planning to make a spooky cemetery scene for some time now. The largest features of the scene will be a gravedigger's shack and a large, forked, dead tree. I have been looking into various tree construction methods and got very excited about the twisted wire method so I figured I'd make a test tree.

The idea here is to cut a number of lengths of soft metal wire, bundle them together and twist them to begin forming a tree trunk. At interval, you pull a few wires from the bundle and twist them together to form a branch, which you subdivide to make thinner branches. This process is repeated all the way up the tree. 

The resulting tree armature can have a convincing shape but needs to be coated with some kind of compound so that you can fatten up the trunk and add bark texture. 

Here's my first attempt- I gathered seven lengths of aluminum wire, each 20 inches long. I stacked the wires together and folded them in half. The loop will become the base of the tree and the 'loose' end of the bundle will ultimately be the top of the tree.

Twist, twist, twist, twist...

The wire bundle twisted into a basic tree shape

The process was easy and actually quite fun to do. The aluminum wire that I used is soft enough to bend easily but when twisted together makes a plenty sturdy tree armature.

I feel like I made a couple of mistakes already. I should have made the first couple of boughs (the ones closest to the bottom) a bit longer so that the tree had more of a taper to its shape.

I'm not sure about the scale of the tree. It looks a bit large for wargaming scale (25-28mm figures).

The tree is also very sparse. It only has a few boughs, and those boughs only divide once or twice. This doesn't make for a very forky, spooky tree. I think these problems are easily solved on the next tree I build:

To fix the scale problem, I will make the internodes (the vertical spaces between branches) shorter. 

To fix the problem of sparse branching, I'll start with more wires in the bundle and take between four and six individual strands off of the trunk to form branches which will let me divide each branch one or two more times and get things spread out a bit better.

Coating the tree. I had some real problems here. 

The twisted aluminum wire is VERY slippery. I tried to coat the tree in a thin layer of Sculptamold, but the Sculptamold refused to stick to the metal (no surprise) but also was not cohesive enough to hold itself together. I tried smashing Sculptamold around the trunk and branches but it was too weak to hold its own weight.

I tried spraying the tree with primer in order to give the surface a better tooth. Priming the tree had no effect on the Sculptamold's performance. Sculptamold just doesn't work here, its anti-gravity properties are poor.

I ended up cutting long, very thin strips of plaster cloth and wrapping the tree and branches. This was decently easy to do and the result is pretty good. at the very least, I now have a sturdy, porous surface on the tree that will help other materials stick.

NOTE: I've read of a product called "Flexibark" which is popular for this job. Apparently it's plenty sticky enough to hold itself to the tree and includes some texturing materials which supposedly emulate bark. Also, the dried product remains flexible in case you need to make changes to the shape.

NOTE: I've also read that spackling compound can be used to coat a tree armature. Especially if you can mix it from powder and control the consistency of the mixture. 

I didn't have access to either of these items so I just went with the plaster cloth for this tree.

Oh, and obviously modeling clay is an option but I didn't want to use clay because I don't want to hand-sculpt all of the texture... I want to try to inherit some texture from the material that I use for this test tree. I secretly feel that polymer clay is probably the best option for building up the tree so I'll try that in the future.

The tree armature wrapped in plaster cloth and allowed to dry

The result of using the plaster cloth is interesting. The tree has a decently rough texture that I think might pass for a barky surface with the right paint job. There are a couple of spots which definitely look wrapped (near the base) but there are also places which look naturally nobbly and tree-like (the branch second from the top).

Overall the tree is a bit lumpy and inconsistent looking. This might be OK for a dead tree. The branches are too thick when compared to the trunk, and the branches do not taper. This particular appearance makes the branches look broken, which again might be alright for a dead tree.

I think the tree needs some more shape work before painting. The trunk needs bulked up and the branches do need a bit of a taper. I'm not sure what I'm going to use to build up the needed bulk. The chunks of paper in Sculptamold are too large and would give the tree a strange texture, and lightweight Hydrocal is way too fragile for the job. 

I guess that leaves good old plaster-of-paris. Or maybe I can find some spackling compound.

Next up, improving the shape and texture. Also, painting.

[bonejack]

Expanding Foam Terrain: Part II

Time to polish off this project!

The Reaper website, where I got the instructions for this project, warned that the foam cast would continue to shrink as it cures, and shrink it did. No catastrophic change in overall size but the hill sort of behaved as though I stuck a hose in it and vacuumed out some air. It kind of puckered and collapsed/folded a little bit.

This is no big problem for me but it would be if the size and shape I'd planned for had any sort of precise tolerances. For making a rocky hill, things are just fine.

Time to paint! I thinned a little bit of Reaper 'Shadowed Stone' and basecoated the whole model. 

The hill with a basecoat in Reaper 'Shadowed Stone'

In this photo you can also see the shrinking/puckering effect mentioned earlier.

Next, I made a couple of quick drybrush passes over the whole model. First with Reaper 'Stone Grey' and followed by Reaper 'Weathered Stone'. In simpler terms, I basecoated the model in my darkest grey and drybrushed up to the lightest.

The hill after two drybrush passes in successively lighter greys

Now time for some texture. I used Woodland Scenics' 'scenic cement' to attach some of their "Blended Earth" texture and then feather some "Green Grass" in around the base to help the model blend with the green mat we use for gaming. During this step I also laid down some small piles of talus and dripped scenic cement over them to glue them in place.

Some foam turf was added for texture and color

The final touches include gluing down some small foam bushes, little sprigs of ivy and then 'flyspecking' the whole model with a light coat of turf texture.

The final touches: Some small foam bushes and a flyspecking of turf

This project came out pretty well. I ended up with perfectly nice bit of wargaming terrain. The main problem I have with this model is the apparent scale- This model looks a lot more like a huge mountain at tiny scale than a 40 foot hill in wargaming scale. I think the scale is thrown off by a couple of illusions:

First off, the model is too craggy. The frequency and depth of the buckles and bumps on the surface make it appear that it is built to a smaller scale. If the surface were lower-frequency I think the model would look more like a hill in my wargaming scale.

Secondly, another problem of frequency. I tried mixing some coarse bits of talus in with my molding sand so that the surface of the model would have some larger, random texture elements. In the end, this failed. The large bits of talus brushed off when I was cleaning the model after pulling it from the mold. This left me with an all-over sand texture on the model which convinces the eye that we're looking at a model built to a smaller scale. I should have manually tried to restore some variety to the rock texture before painting the model.

Still, it's a usable piece.

[bonejack]

Expanding Foam Terrain: Part I

The 2012 Thanksgiving Festival of Terrain continues!

I've long been fascinated with an article from the Reaper Miniatures website that describes how to use expanding foam to cast lightweight terrain features. This update documents my attempt to use this method to make a little rocky hill.

You should start by reading this article on the Reaper Miniatures Website since it covers most of the details. I'm not going to reproduce information that's available elsewhere so you need to read Reaper's article first for the full instructions.

I will offer a spoiler: This is my new favorite way to build terrain formations.

First, to make my mold. I used some black aquarium sand that I had lying around to make a mold in an old thick-walled mixing bowl. This part is a little tricky since you're scooping out wet sand to form a negative of the object you want to cast. Once I had dug out the shape that I wanted I sprinkled some chunks of Talus into the mold. The exposed layer of sand will end up being the 'skin' of the terrain feature so sprinkling some larger chunks of rock into the mold before squirting the foam in will give the feature a slightly more natural looking texture.

A terrible photograph of my mold, showing the extra texture sprinkles

The black sand made for some awful photographs of my mold since there are no visible shadows. You can't make out the shape of my mold but you can see the bits of talus I scattered to add some texture.

Now the mold gets covered, squirted full of expanding foam and left overnight while the foam expands and dries.

I ran down to the garage this morning to see what I got. I was greeted by a big jiffy puff ball of foam expanding out of the mold. This is good, it probably means I put enough foam into the mold to cast all of the details.

Overexpanded foam poofing out of the mold

All I had to do is lift the whole thing out of the mold (using the puffball as a handle) and brush away all of the loose sand. Some sand (and talus!) will remain embedded in the foam but there's a lot of excess damp sand to get rid of.

The casting flipped and brushed off. No voids or other defects!

The cast came out great. I now have an awesome little hilly terrain feature to paint. The foam is quite durable and really lightweight. These both seem like good features for a piece of terrain that's going to be used for wargaming.

I tore the puffball off of the back of the cast and separated the cast from the board and brought the finished product upstairs to finish drying. The foam is dry but there's still some dampness left over from the wet sand. 

A fine portrait of the terrain as it dries. Peep that natural shape!

The cast needs a few hours to dry so that I have a nice dry surface to accept primer.

Next update: Priming and painting!

[bonejack]

Mud Bog: Part II

With the previous layer of plaster and mud texture dry, I watered down some dark brown paint (not too watery!) and put down a thick coat over the whole model. I also painted the puddles to seal them up for the water effects that would be poured in later.

The mud bog after the final coat of paint, which is still wet

I noticed taking this photo that there were some shiny wet patches of paint all over the model where the thick paint was drying more slowly than in other areas. This provided a very convincing illusion so I decided that after everything was dry I would use some glossy medium to recreate the wet look.

I had already done some tests to figure out how to tint the water effects for the mud puddles. I had a cloudy, grey-brown color in mind and got the right effect by mixing some Reaper paint into the water effects. The 'recipe' is 2 drops of Reaper "Bone Shadow" into one tablespoon of water effects. I added a teaspoon of water to this mixture to thin the water effects down a little bit so that it would spread more easily in the puddles. (Water effects is safe to water down slightly).

The mud puddles will be a grody grey-brown color

I have had some problems in the past pouring Water Effects from small plastic cups like this. Sometimes the thick liquid will crawl down the side of the cup and drip from the bottom. Since the mud puddles are small and I can't afford to drop water where it doesn't belong I decided to use a little plastic dropper to put in the water effects. I love these little droppers. I got a big bag of 500 on Amazon for a few bucks. They're definitely worth buying.

I saved the leftover water mixture so that I could use it to top off the puddles, which are going to shrink down overnight as they dry.

Using a dropper to carefully fill the puddles with tinted Water Effects

Finishing up:

After the water effects were let to dry overnight, they (predictably) shrank. I used the leftover water mixture from the previous step to 'refill' the shallow puddles. Water Effects are handy that way- You can pour a wet layer on top of a dry layer and everything will work out just fine.

I used Citadle 'Ardcoat to get back the wet look that the mud had when the paint was drying. 'Ardcoat is a gloss matte varnish. I used a big flat brush to put it on in circular smearing motions to create random, inconsistent patches of wetness. The effect is great:

A Bile Thrall slogs through our finished mud wallow

I'm happy with the end result of this experiment but I have some parting thoughts for improving mud projects in the future:

The final product is a very consistent shade of brown. This is no big surprise since I only used one paint color. I was afraid to wash or drybrush the mud because I thought these effects might make the mud look like a continuous surface rather than a big pile of mud made by blobs upon blobs of mud. I think the right thing to do would probably be a selective wash over some areas with a darker brown paint, just to give the appearance of multiple types of soil munged up in the mud.

The texture is good- lumpy and organic, but could probably use some small bits of sticks and clumps of grass stirred in to boost the apparent number and types of organic materials mixed up in the mud mass.

The mud puddles look pretty good. They look filthy and have a good translucency to provide the illusion that the puddles may be deeper than the actual model is thick. That was a goal from the start so I'm quite happy about that. If anything I'd have used a bit of a greenish or ochre tint to bring a little complimentary color to the model.

I wanted to do a grass and dirt border to help this model appear to blend with the green mat that I use to cover the table for wargaming. As it happens I didn't leave myself enough space to build up a transition around the border. 

[bonejack]

Leopard Spot Painting: Rocks

Today I'm going to try painting some plaster rocks using a method called "Leopard Spot Painting". This is a technique used by model railroad enthusiasts and made popular by a company called Woodland Scenics.

Woodland Scenics has a YouTube video here that demonstrates how leopard spot painting works. I am using different colors and proportions of pigments than in the video but the core technique remains the same.

I went on a shopping spree in a local model railroad store and bought a bunch of rock-making supplies, all manufactured by Woodland Scenics. They have a huge product line aimed at model railroad builders. Here's what I got:

Vinyl rock molds

Lightweight hydrocal plaster

Earth Colors (brand) pigments

Scenic cement

The molds are really nice. They're made of thick, tough vinyl that's still flexible enough to 'pop' the castings out. They're also highly detailed.

Hydrocal is a type of plaster that's especially good for casting high-detail objects (such as rocks!) It's also extremely light when fully dry. The tradeoff is that the castings can be brittle which might spell trouble for scenery pieces that are going to be moved and handled during gaming. I guess we'll see.

Earth Colors are a brand of water-based pigments that are used to stain plaster castings. I'll be using these to 'paint' my rocks. The colors I picked for this rock are burnt umber, raw umber and slate gray. I also bought black to use as a final wash.

Finally, scenic cement is a sort of all-purpose adhesive and sealant. Research indicates that it's actually just a watery solution of acrylic matte medium. This will be used to seal the rock and set the pigment colors, which would continue to fade otherwise.

A collection of Woodland Scenics rock molds. (Not my photo)

I'm not going to document the whole process of casting the rock. It's as you'd expect- mix the hydrocal with water to the correct consistency, pour it into the mold and pop it out once dry. If you're that interested, there's a YouTube video here that shows the process in detail.

I selected a mold of a long, narrow rock that's tall enough to provide cover for an ordinary 30mm miniature figure. The hydrocal only needed about 45 minutes to set up firm enough to be removed from the mold but I let the piece dry overnight before trying to paint it.

A nice big rock cast in Hydrocal plaster and dried overnight

The Earth Colors pigments are very dense and need to be diluted with water before they can go onto the rock. I had to do a bunch of experimenting to find out how much to dilute each color to get the look I want and ended up with a separate ratio for each color:

Burnt Umber 1:4

Raw Umber 1:6

Slate Gray 1:20

Those ratios are all one part pigment to several parts water. The slate gray has to be diluted in 20 parts water!

Now, to paint. I used a cheap sponge brush to dab the paint on in coin-sized spots. I went one color at a time, covering about 1/3rd of the rock's surface area on each pass and making sure that the final color covers any remaining bare white plaster. I liked the imprecision of this step. You just blot blot blot paint spots onto the rock until you like the look.

Leopard spot painting using three different colors

I was surprised at how great the rock looked at this point. It's easy to see why this is a popular method for painting rocks.

The pigments color the plaster by actually soaking in and staining it. Once the pigment solutions start to dry the colors will begin to fade. In order to stop the fading process and set the color I had to apply a layer of scenic cement over the entire painted surface. I doused my sponge brush with scenic cement and put it on nice and thick.

The cement is a milky color going on but dries perfectly clear. It also seals up the plaster so that it won't absorb any more liquid. It's like a very thin plastic skin over the plaster.

Once the scenic cement is dry I washed the entire rock surface with a 1:16 mixture of black pigment and water. Since the rock is now 'sealed' by the scenic cement this wash flows over the surface and collects in the little cracks and recesses of the rock surface, bringing out detail. 

The rock is finished with a black wash to bring out details in the surface

In the photo above the top half of the rock is washed out by my bright work lamp but the area around the bottom nicely illustrates the color and detail of the finished rock. 

I think it's safe to call this project a success so I'll move forward knowing that I can make great-looking rocks for my scenery pieces.

[bonejack]

Swamp Project: Part II

Now the various layers of plaster, paint and primer are all dry. Time to apply some turf to the shoreline to make it look grassy and organic.

I used a wide brush to put down a thick layer of Woodland Scenics 'scenic cement' and then followed it up with a heavy sprinkle of green sponge turf from a big shaker. It's best to work in small sections to make sure you can get the turf down before too much of the cement soaks into the Sculptamold, which is still pretty porous at this point:

Halfway through cementing the sponge turf to the shoreline

After the cement dried I tipped the model to dump off all excess turf. I used a soft brush to sweep away all of the little particles that fell onto the water portion of the model then randomly sprinkled a different color turf around to break up all of that solid green and make it look more natural and less like a manicured golf course.

Since this is a piece for wargaming, it needs to be fairly durable and the turf really needs to stay put. I sealed the turf by using a plastic dropper to flood the turf with scenic cement from the top. The absorbent turf really sucks up and distributes the cement so it's only necessary to put down about one drop per square inch and it will automatically spread out to flood and seal a good-sized spot:

Using a plastic dropper to flood the turf with scenic cement from above

With the turf sealed (and dried!) I added some detail to the scene. Some little sponge bushes, tufts of grass and flowers, and some tall swamp grass which will end up poking out of the water. These are all attached with a bead of plain white glue:

Small plants, grass and flowers add detail to the scene.

Now it's time to finally pour the water effects. I used the same recipe as I did for the little pond project- one drop of P3 green ink in one ounce of Water Effects liquid. The different between this piece and the small pond is that the pond had a deep basin that needed to be filled with water effects. This piece will only have a very thin layer of Water Effects poured on and relies on the underlying paint to provide the illusion of depth.

Water Effects liquid has been poured over the area that will be the swamp.

In this photo the water effects liquid is still wet so it has a cloudy, bluish appearance. This will clear up when it dries. I'll leave it overnight.

I got up this morning like a kid at Christmas, rushing to see how the water turned out. The effect is so-so. It doesn't really present the illusion of depth that I'd hoped for. I think I didn't paint the swamp basin with dark enough colors. Also, my poor blending (visible lines between colors) is visible through the water and kind of spoils the effect. I think I would have been better off just painting the whole basin in one dark color. It's not a disaster, just not what I was hoping for.

There was a disaster though- the shrinking water effects caused the entire piece to warp. The warping isn't due to the wood becoming wet- The water effects acted like a muscle, pulling all of the edges inward as it dried and shrank. The whole piece has cupped and no longer sits level. Worse, it actually wobbles because the whole thing is now shaped like a shallow bowl.

If I had anticipated this problem I would have weighed down the edges of the piece so the shrinking liquid couldn't pull them up. The water effects may have torn in that situation but I could easily have fixed that by pouring on a bit more water effects.

So, shit. That was a lot of work done to end up with a warped piece of scenery. It still looks pretty decent and I suppose is still usable. I really wanted it to be flat and flush with the play surface. Now I'll probably have to fix the shape by gluing it down to a thicker plank of strong wood.

The finished product. Looks good, but has a warped shape

You can see the effects of the warping here. As our hand model holds one end of the piece flush with the table the other end rises almost a full inch.

The whole thing needs a few more detail plants added to round things out a bit. I'm super pissed that it's warped, but it's perfectly usable. Well at least now I know how much force a pool of shrinking water effects can exert on my models.

[bonejack]

Swamp Project: Part I

If you are a regular reader of this blog you'll notice that a terrain project that I recently started has disappeared from the site without any follow up updates. This is because I had a catastrophic problem painting the sculptamold material and threw the project away. I usually post mistakes here so I'll have to follow up with some things that I've learned about using and painting sculptamold. 

For now I'm just excited to move on to another terrain project. I'm going to take what I learned while making the little pond and make a larger swampy water feature for the gaming table.

I chose 1/8 inch thick MDF board for the base. It's cheap, strong, flat and since it is fibrous, it's less likely to warp because of the moisture it will be exposed to when I apply the Sculptamold.

I discovered that I wasn't very good or imaginative when it came to designing a natural-looking shape for the swamp itself. I ended up doing a Google image search for lakes and selected a mostly-round lake that I thought had a pleasing shape. I printed it out, cut it out and traced it onto my MDF board.

Once the actual shape of the water was transferred to the board I completed the layout by hand-sketching the outline of the shore which roughly follows the shape of the water:

The basic layout- The inner shape is the water, the outer shape is the shore

Next I used a Dremel scroll saw, which I love, to cut the shape out of the MDF. I also used a little power sander to bevel the outside edge down a little bit to make a smooth transition from the gaming surface onto this piece.

I brushed on a thick coat of Vallejo Surface Primer to fill in the area which will eventually become the water. This stuff is so black that it looks like an Acme portable hole. Awesome!

The layout after cutting. The water region is filled in with black primer.

Next I wanted to add some texture to the shoreline. The shore will eventually be covered with a foam turf product to resemble grass but it would look odd if it were completely flat so I mixed up a small batch of Sculptamold and left it very thick, like clay, and smeared a thin layer over all of the un-primed surface to form the shoreline and terrain around the water.

Building up a bit of shoreline terrain around the water area also provides a shallow lip that will contain the Water Effects liquid when it comes time to pour it in.

Sculptamold is a great product for this type of job because it has small bits of paper pulp in the mixture. The paper pulp gives the stuff a lumpy texture that makes for natural-looking terrain. I wet my fingers and flattened the surface of the Sculptamold down to a gentle texture so that it would appear more earthy and less rocky.

Sculptamold clay makes a nice organic-looking shoreline texture

Next up, coloring. The shoreline is going to be covered with a spongy green turf product but it still needs to be painted so that none of the white shows through any holes or gaps in the turf. I just slapped on a 50:50 mix of green acrylic paint and water, just enough to tint the stuff green and blot out any visible white spots.

Painting the water area was a little different. I used acrylic paint for this job as well. I mixed up a nice muddy green-brown and painted the whole area a couple of times until the primer was completely covered. Then I lightened the mixture with some plain green paint highlighted the area around the shoreline. The idea here is to provide the illusion of depth when viewed through the thin layer of water effects and make the water appear more shallow around the shoreline. I don't think I did a particularly great job on this part but I think it might be enough to make the illusion work.

I also used some Citadel Agrax Earthshade wash to make a darker area in the center of the water. Hopefully this will appear to be deeper water. 

To add detail I cast some small stones in Hydrocal plaster using a mold from Woodland Scenics. I painted them and glued them to the piece, a few in the water and one on the shore.

Everything is prepped now. In the next update I'll put down the turf and pour the water:

The whole piece is painted, ready to receive sponge turf and water effects.

P.S. The white spots around the shoreline are blobs of white glue that I put down to build up some places where the Sculptamold shoreline had gaps or low spots. I filled these gaps so that the water effects liquid won't leak out into the grass when it is poured in. The glue is wet in this picture but will dry clear and will be invisible when it merges with the water effects.

[bonejack]

Making a pond: Part IV

It's done!

The pond was let to dry overnight. The water effects liquid shrank much more than I expected and left some depressions in the surface:

The water effects liquid shrank as it dried and left some holes

The color, depth and general appearance of the water came out pretty well, I think. I had some technical problems though:

If you look between the end of the dock and the largest fallen log you'll see a gap in the water which goes all the way to the bottom of the piece. Also if you look around the dock and the far right end of the large fallen log you'll see a puckered shape where surface tension pulled the water effects liquid up around the objects and created a curve as the water effect shrank and the water level dropped.

The solution is fairly straightforward: Pour on another thin layer of water effects:

The final product. A brave hero searches for keys that fell into the water.

A second layer of water effects poured upon the first dried without any weird lines or anything- the two layers integrated perfectly. So this bodes well for making touch-ups and stuff. 

However, after the second layer dried (and shrank!) I still had depressions and pucker marks. So, I poured on another layer!

The photo above was taken before the third layer was fully dried and so there's a cloudy area in the water still which will clear up. There are still pucker marks around the dock that I probably won't try to fix. Next time the dock needs to be higher up anyway- The water level wasn't supposed to touch the dock anyway. 

I'm still happy with how the water effect appears. It has a nice color and opacity and the paintjob under the water effect looks really good. The extra particles of grass that I sprinkled into the water really do look like the bits of greenery and scum that you'd expect to see in a small body of still water.

This one's a successful experiment so now I'm confident enough to try building some terrain on a larger scale. 

[bonejack]

Making a Pond: Part III

We've reached the moment of truth! Time to pour the water effects resin!

First, we gather our materials:

Woodland scenics Water Effects, mixing cup and P3 Green Ink

Since the water effects resin dries perfectly clear I have decided to mix in a bit of green ink to give it a swampy/pondy tint and also to help with the illusion of depth by providing some clouding. 

One drop of green ink is added to one ounce of Water Effects

The resin is really viscous and had to be stirred thoroughly to get the ink mixed throughout. After a tiny bit of mixing there were some really neat looking ribbons of color throughout that might be useful for some kind of effects but since we want water, I just kept at it.

All mixed up and ready to pour!

At this point the resin has a funny minty appearance. The resin appears cloudy but clears up as it dries, so the finished water is going to appear much less murky than it does here in the mixing cup. In fact, I'm worried that I don't have enough ink in the mixture to give me the color and opacity that I'm hoping for but since this is my first attempt, I figure the one-drop-in-one-ounce approach is a good starting place and I can make changes on future projects.

Time to pour!

Liquid water effects poured into my pond basin

I had a bit of trouble pouring this stuff from my little mixing cup. It poured from the rim of the cup AND ran down the side and dripped from the bottom of the cup. By the time I noticed, a couple of drops had already landed in the grass and other places where I didn't want it. Oops. I guess in the future I'll use a plastic syringe to squirt the resin into tiny places like this.

I worried that my dock wasn't raised far enough above the waterline and I was right; The water level came right up to the bottom of the dock and the surface tension of the Water Effects resin pulled the meniscus up around the dock which will probably look pretty funny and un-waterlike when it dries.

Because the resin is so thick, it behaves oddly around the edges of the pond and where the water meets the rock and the pieces of wood.  According to the bottle you have to fix this by teasing around those areas with the tip of a toothpick. This worked just fine and eliminated the odd bulge where the thick resin didn't interface well with the dry items in the scene.

To finish things off, I sprinkled some of my spring mix flock onto the surface of the water, putting more around the shore and less out in the center. This, I hope, will look like small bits of vegetation floating in the still water. Some of the pieces sank so I suppose they might help with the illusion of depth as well.

A bit of artificial grass flock is sprinkled into the water for detail.

Now the sucky part. Water Effects dry very slowly so I have to wait until tomorrow to see what the result will be.

[bonejack]

Making a Pond: Part II

In today's installment we'll get our little pond ready for the resin. This means doing all of the painting and groundwork to finish out the details.

After all of the glue dried from yesterday's preparation I painted the whole pond in Vallejo Surface Primer (black) and basecoated the pond in two colors: P3 Umbral Umber for the shoreline and P3 Gun Corps Brown for the pond basin itself:

The first coats of paint. Dark brown for the shore and lighter for the basin

Hopefully painting the basin in a lighter tone will make the wet part of the pond look nicely distinct from the shoreline.

The photo above was taken while the first coat of paint was still wet. It took another coat of each color to get complete coverage. My big plan for painting this thing is to paint the shoreline in a really high-frequency gritty way and the basin in the smoothest possible way in order to emphasize the difference between the sandy and muddy parts.

All painting is done now. Note the gritty shoreline and smooth basin

To finish the shoreline paint job I drybrushed a layer of P3 Gun Corps Brown all over followed by a patchy drybrushing of P3 Rucksack Tan. I then used Reaper Olive Green and Reaper Light Olive to drybrush some lush patches onto the brown. All of this drybrushing gives me the rough texture I want for the shore.

The basin was washed heavily with a very slightly thinned Citadel Agrax Earthshade. I thinned the wash so that when it collected into puddles these puddles would be a bit less dark than normal.

When I hand-molded the clay to make the pond I made sure to put a lot of dimples in the basin. I did this on purpose to make places where the wash would collect and make dark spots which will hopefully give us the illusion of uneven depth once the water effects are poured in.

Next up: Grass and vegetation (Groundwork)

Some Gale Force 9 scenery products that I'll be using

I have a lot of Gale Force 9 scenery products. These guys have a large line of grasses and other groundwork products that are really nice and well-priced. In this project I'll be using the three shown here. (Clockwise from upper left) Summer Blend, Marsh Blend and Spring Undergrowth.

The pond gets a pass of dirt, grass and vegetation. Ready to receive water!

I applied these in the usual manner: Mix up some white glue and water to make a thin glue, brush it onto the piece and sprinkle the flocking onto it. 

I used the Marsh Blend fairly liberally all around the base to give us the appearance of dirt and grass. I concentrated some small blobs and patches of the Summer Blend right up next to the shoreline to play as the plants that tend to grow right up around the water's edge. 

The Spring Undergrowth was used sparingly here and there to represent small shrub-type plants.

I used one other scenery product: Wasteland Tufts from The Army Painter line. These are the spiky dark grass patches you see at a couple of spots around the waterline. I love these tufts- They're simple to use and look awesome.

I don't feel that I have a strong sense for laying down natural-looking vegetation yet but for now I'm satisfied enough that the pond looks better now than it did without this work.

Using super glue, I very lightly anchored all of the accents to the pond- the dock, rock and stumps. These will eventually be embedded in the plastic water resin so they don't need to be glued down too firmly.

Once all of the groundwork glue dries I'll brush the basin out carefully to get rid of accidental debris that made its way down there and then pour in the water!

[bonejack]

Making a Pond: Part I

When I get fatigued from working on miniature figures I usually switch tack for a little while and do something else. In this case I'm going to work on a piece of scenery.

There are a number of liquid plastic resins that are sold to hobbyists as "water effects". These are very popular with model railroad enthusiasts in particular. The basic idea is that you dig out a spot in your terrain to serve as a riverbed or lake bed, pour this stuff in and when it dries you get a clear, flat, shiny result that resembles still water. 

I've been curious about this stuff for a long time so I bought a bottle. I have decided to take a stab at making a small pond to test it out. So, I need to construct a piece of scenery with a depression into which I can pour the water effects to make a pond. I got out the Sculpey modeling clay, which can be baked and hardened after I have finished shaping it.

A tiny 'pond' made of Sculpey modeling clay. 

I put down a thick wafer of clay on the back of a glass baking pan so that I can put the whole thing straight into the oven instead of risking deforming my model by trying to peel it off my work surface in order to put it into the oven. I smooshed a depression into the middle of the thing and then worked the edges out a bit so that I'll have a place to put some sand and plants which will serve as the 'shoreline' for my little pond.

I tried with moderate success to use some water on my finger to smooth the fingerprints out of the clay. Sculpey is a poly clay, though, and didn't really respond to the water like some other clay products (such as DAS).

Once I had finished shaping the clay, it's into the oven at 275 degrees for 40 minutes. This doesn't make the clay rock hard, but it becomes rigid enough to behave more like something made of plastic than made of clay.

After baking our pond is now a plastic-like wafer.

This whole thing still has to be primed and painted before I can pour the water in, so the next step is to add whatever additional texture I want before applying the primer. I decided to leave the part of the model that will be under water smooth and glue some sand and grit to the 'shoreline'. I did this in the usual fashion- mix a bit of white glue with water, brush it on, and dump the sand over it.

Sand and grit applied all over the shoreline, leaving the pond itself smooth.

While waiting for the glue to dry, I gathered up some stuff to use as accents in my pond.  In my yard I found a couple of twigs that look like small-scale trees, and a nice stone to put out in the water.

I decided to try to make a little dock. I cut a wooden stir-stick into segments about an inch long and glued them together into something resembling a dock. I used a hobby knife to nick and jab the wood and fray the ends a bit so that it doesn't look so brand new. After two pretty heavy washes (Citadel Seraphim Sepia and Citadel Agrax Earthshade), the dock began to look passably weathered.

With the dock, twigs and stone I figure I have enough details to make this thing look like a nice little pond so I took a stab at composing the scene:

A test composition of how things might be laid out in my tiny pond scene

I like the composition I came up with and I'm satisfied that there are enough major details. Of course I'll use flocking and static grass and plant tufts to decorate the shoreline but any more rocks or sticks would probably crowd this tiny scene. 

Alright, well, we're still waiting for glue to dry. See you on the next update.

[bonejack]

Battlefield Accessories: Part III

The box and barrels- I have two barrels and an ammo box to paint before I can assemble my finished product. 

Here are the barrels with their basecoats of paint:

The barrels are basecoated. One for fuel, one for oil.

The barrel models are identical but I decided to use two different colors for a little more visual interest. The red barrel is based in Citadel Khorne Red and the yellow is based in Citadel Averland Sunset.

In keeping with the grimy motif I really went to work on dirtying these barrels up:

The yellow oil barrel after a dirt and damage pass

I weathered both barrels in a similar way, starting with a nice wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade to provide shading and grease. I then used a lighter shade of the base color (Yriel Yellow for this barrel) to freehand some scratches and paint chips onto the barrel. Once these little yellow details dried I painted over the upper 90% of them with Citadel Leadbelcher, leaving a little bit of the clean, bright yellow showing along the bottom of each detail to provide an illusion of depth where the paint was scratched off.

I then took the same highlight color and went around the barrel rims randomly spotting and streaking them with 'clean spots', then repeated the process with Leadbelcher to give the rims a scratched appearance.

My favorite part is the spilled oil. I waited until all of the paint was totally dry and then freehanded the spill with Citadel Athonian Camoshade, making sure to get a nice puddle accumulated along the bottom rim of the barrel.

Now for the ammo crate:

Ammo crate with its basecoat complete

I used Reaper Olive Green to basecoat the ammo box for a military appearance.

A heavy wash gives us a very used look

I shaded the entire crate with a wash of Citadel Athonian Camoshade, which is a great dirty-green color.

In keeping with the kind of abuse the other elements in this piece seem to have undergone, the ammo box also needed some weathering treatment:

Some weathering details give us a fine finished product

Using the same techniques as the barrels above, I painted on scratches and paint chips using Reaper Light Olive to provide the illusion of depth. I sort of feel like I should have made the damage details on this box a bit smaller- they look to me like they're at the wrong scale. 

I also added a lot of minor scratches along the edges and corners by painting a thin line of Leadbelcher without any accompanying highlights for depth.

I'll do one more post on this topic tomorrow with a photo of the complete piece.

[bonejack]

Battlefield Accessories: Part II

In this update I'm going to go over how I painted rust onto the platform. I love painting rust, since it's one of those freeform techniques that doesn't require a lot of patience or precision to achieve really great results.

First up I gathered the paint colors that I would be using

The four paint colors I use to paint rust effects

The basic idea behind painting rust is to start with the darkest brown (leftmost) color and work towards the lightest orange color, applying less and less paint each time you move up to the next brightest color.

I use a basic drybrushing effect to apply the first three colors, and a technique called 'stippling' to apply the brightest color and finish the effect off with a 'crusty' appearance.

Step 1: Heavy drybrush application of P3 Gun Corps Brown

I blocked out the first patch of rust by drybrushing the area fairly heavily with Gun Corps Brown.

Step 2: Drybrush with Reaper Rust Brown

Using a bit less paint, I drybrushed the same area with Reaper Rust Brown

Step 3: Another drybrush, now with Reaper Phoenix Red

In this photo you can see that I established a couple other patches of rust and got them all caught up to this step, which is a drybrush with Reaper Phoenix Red.

For the final application of paint I needed a stippling brush. Stippling is the process of taking a stubby brush with a tiny amount of paint on it and applying the paint in a series of short 'stabbing' motions, tapping the tips of the bristles against the surface to apply the paint in little clusters of dots. The reason I finish my rust off in this way is to ensure that I'm only applying a tiny amount of the very bright orange color, and also to give the patches of rust the illusion of having a crusty texture.

I clipped the point from an older brush to create a 'stippling brush'

In the photo above you see my homemade stipple brush. It's just an old round #3 brush with the tip cleanly snipped off by a hobby knife to give me that flat, stubby end.

Step 4: Lightly stipple the rusty patches with Reaper Fire Orange

This piece looks fantastic to the naked eye but photographing it with an iPhone under my fluorescent work light has really made the orange paint appear much brighter than it is. When I finish this project I'll try to take a photo with a better camera that will give me better control over the exposure so that I can defeat that fluorescent effect.