More scenics

Done some more bits and pieces. These first bits in clay. I have found clay shrinks significantly as it dries, and this first image shows what can happen! I formed the shap around a plastic cup, and when the clay dried, great cracks appeared in it. I am counting that one as a failure, and using it to test paints.

So it looks like the best way to use clay is in individual pieces. Here are some Morrowind-style muck sponges, together with a couple of pillars and an altar.

And a giant statue head.

Another statue. The figure is from a range called Swampsterz, sat on the lid of a cocktail stick packet. The steps are disks of corrugated card with ready-mixed plaster spread on, and carved.

The is "Tower of the Sun Orb", which featured in an earlier post. Now painted (enamel paint to go over the shiny side of the card, with highlighting in mixed silver and black acrylic).

A tor, made of foam insulation covered in ready mixed plaster.

First miniatures

Here are the first few miniatures. My daughter has the start box for "Age of Sigmar", and this is one of big guys for Khorne, and is the first one she painted:

This was at a Games Workshop, with help from the guys there (otherwise I would have made her start on a small one!). Games Workshop merchandise is pretty expensive, but you do get a good service in the shops for free, so the cost of the goods has to cover that. I do not begrudge the prices so much once I realised that.

I helped her putting them together at first, but she sees to be doing a good job on her own. The painting is all her own work apart from that first one. This is a carnosaurus, and he did have a couple of gaps, which I had to fill in, as you can see on the second image. I am not sure if this was how it was put together or an issue in the model, but it should look fine once painted (and with a rider added).

Here is one of the stormcast army after primer:

I did look at alternatives to Citadel primer. You can get black spray paint for a couple of quid, but it tends to be gloss and may not stick to plastic too well. Car primer paint is supposed to be good, but that is around £6; it did not seem too much more to get the proper stuff for about £10.

This is a seraphon footsoldier (not sure of the technical name), part-painted.

Some progress

We put Papier-mâché on the first river boardand it now looks like this.

Only one layer so far, but we plan to do four. It took a long time to dry, and I think that caused the wood to warp a little, so one corner is about half an inch higher. I have since attached braces on all the sides:

Hopefully this will straighten it out (possible with some damping of the underside). Once the Papier-mâché is done, the screws can be removed, and the holes filled in with plaster. Well that is the plan anyway.

I am also building this "Tower of the Inferno". The golden orb is a Christmas decoration, and there is a piece of wood in the core of the tower to give it strength, the rest is card from cereal packers.

Last post I had been experimenting with clay; I am having reservations now. The clay strinks significantly on drying, and if it is on some kind of armature or attached to a base, it cracks. I will continue to play around with it, but it is not as useful as I was hoping.

So war-gaming...

My daughter is suddenly into Warhammer. I am not so much into the war gaming, but I do enjoy modelling, and have my own model railway.

So this weekend we started to build some battle boards and scenery.

Battle boards

The battle boards are 4mm plywood. I purchased them from a local timber merchant, as 4' by 8' sheets, and they cut them into 2' by 2' squares. They were actually a few millimeters off perfect, but were a lot straighter then I could do myself.

Action shot with figure:

 I sanded off the rough edges, and painted them with wood primer, which should stop damp getting into them, preventing them warping.

Two of them will feature a river. As that requires depth, the land will slope up to the river, which is not exactly prototypical, but there you go. Here is one, this will feature an island just big enough for one figure to stand on. So far the profile has been defined using strips of card from cereal packets.

At the back, you can just see some grass in the making. the timber merchant were kind enough to give me some sawdust (in fact a bag so big I struggled to carry it). I mixed the sawdust with ready made poster paint to make it green, and in the image above it is drying out.

Scenery Features

My plan for features is to have them free standing, but to leave spaces on the battle board where they can be placed. Each feature uses an old CD as a base, to give it a standard size  and to ensure the base will not warp.

Here are some weird plant-things, made from clay over cardboard tubes, inspired from Morrowind (sorry, out of focus).

The next two are earlier is the process. On the left, a gothic ruin, on the right an orb of power. the orb is a ping pong ball with a couple of LEDs in it.

Here is the gothic ruin with the clay added.