Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Ruined Chapel... part 1


This is a piece of terrain that I have been eager to try for quite a while.  I had hoarded the supplies for it, waiting for a chance to give it a try.  One of the interesting items I had saved was some sheets of textured plasticard that looked like tile floors.


Here's a better view.  Normally I would just cut up pieces of matt board or hard board, but this stuff seemed like it would be fun!


To make the walls, I took some of that nifty craft foam that Rich had given me.  Unlike the normal pink foam, this carves extremely well, especially with a very sharp knife.  The pink foam will crumble a little more easily.  I traced out a window pattern that would give some good sight lines to 28mm figures, and but them out.

The pink foam is a special corner piece.


Here you can see that I have hacked away at the white foam, trying to simulate the broken stones as quickly as possible.


I cut some foam board to support the walls.  This would make it a bit more decorative, and provide a better surface for gluing the walls to the base.


The walls begin to rise!  You can see how I am using the corner piece to help join the two walls together...


The walls have been raised.  I tried to keep enough open space in the interior to easily place at least ten 28mm figures inside.


Meanwhile, on the exterior, I wanted to provide cover by using the thickness of the walls to cut down on sight lines from outside the structure.


To create the next decorative element (which also offers some more support to the walls), I cut a bunch of uniformly sized strips of foam core.


I matched whatever damage had been done to the main walls on these support pieces, and glued them in place.


This was done between all the window sections.  Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, where we put in the floor, use the excess window cut outs as fallen stones, and glue in all the rock and gravel!!  It will be lots of fun!




A little fixer-upper, painting the house...



For everyone who has been waiting to see what the house would look like painted, today is your day!


I'm starting off with the top views, so that you can see the roof and the ground treatments a little better.  I will post some ground level views later...


This was another pretty limited palette.  The same black, white, sap green, cadmium red, and tan.  I did use a little Vallejo dark sea blue and some black ink for certain effects, such as the windows and cracks.


I put a layer of gloss varnish over the windows, which gives them just a bit of a transparent look.  I didn't want to go too shiny, since they are not exactly supposed to be high quality plate glass :-)


I love putting the mossy stuff on rooftops!

Once again, the grass and flock was used to create some extra color contrast.  I focused on the reddish and tan colors during the painting, so that brighter green adds a little splash!


By painting the windows the darker blue grey, it allowed me to lighten up the wood trim around it with the tan, adding some interest there as well.


Finally, making the cracks with the liner brush and the ink mixed with various paints is the touch that I look forward to the most!