9 posts tagged “terrain”
A fella on the Hirst Arts forum was showing off his latest projects and he had these wonderful bottles on the crates. So I pestered the heck out of him until he gave me all the details.
In a nutshell:
- Glue beads onto a straight pin
- Base with white acrylic
- Paint with ink
- Varnish
For whatever reason superglue isn't liking me these days. I just can't get it to work. I think the house is too dry for it to adhere so I may have to experiment with that but not right now. So I used regular tacky glue. While this fills in the gaps between the beads so they look more cohesive it takes longer to dry and I seem to end up with crooked bottles. Those are going in the back.
Two coats of white craft paint make the proto-bottles a nice smooth white. It also reinforces the glue bond and fills in the spaces even more. Since I'm trying to look like they're one unit this is a good thing.
On to the ink. I do have Reaper inks and haven't really had a chance to use them much. This was a great opportunity. It took two coats to get it looking smooth. I probably could have done a third coat but didn't for two reasons.
- I didn't want the color to look too opaque
- I'm lazy
I let those dry really well. Because I had other things to do.
On to the last step - varnish. The originator used three coats of Future Floor Wax. If you haven't used this stuff in your terrain and other miniature making adventures you're really missing out. Great gloss finish and tough as nails. Downside is that it is really thin so if you're looking for something to stick on the surface you're going to have some issues.
So begins the Great Varnish Experiment. The idea is to give the bottles a decently thick layer of clear so the eye is fooled into thinking the bottle itself is clear. I decided to try out the layers of Future vs. straight acrylic craft varnish (gloss). The craft varnish is much, much thicker so it sticks to the surface and leaves a thicker result. At least, that's my hypotheses.
Without further ado, here's the current state of the experiment:
That bottle is actually painted with two coats of Reaper Clear Plum. The Clears are pigment in a clear base. So I thought I would give it a try. That's with one coat of the acrylic varnish.
The odd blue-green bottle is two coats of Reaper Clear Viridian and again, one coat of acrylic varnish.
The deeper green bottle is two coats of Reaper Green Ink and one coat of acrylic varnish.
The lighter purple bottle to the right is two coats of Reaper Purple Ink and two coats of Future.
Personally I like the hard gloss of the Future. But the acrylic varnish gives a thicker clear coat. So I think I'm going to combine the best of both worlds and do two coats in the future: one of the acrylic and one of Future.
I was wondering how the Reaper Clear colors would turn out. They're much more opaque than the inks but have a richness that will work for more pottery-like bottles. They still have enough of a clear feel that they might work nicely.
So tonight I'll hit everything on the board with one last coat of Future. Then I get to start painting caps and such.
The glossy surface is also just crying out for me to try out decals as well.
Yes, after much angsting the fountain has been completed. Overall I'm quite pleased and will have some pictures later with it combined with my modular dungeon. But for now, behold it in all its glory!
There's a statue in the middle. Some day I'll be able to take a picture that shows it.
Edit - detail shot that was requested on one of the forums so I thought I would add it here too.
Rather than edit the last post I'll just put them in a new one. Makes it look like I've been doing more work than I actually have.
Well, the fountain is kind of back where it was before I broke it. The difference is that now it has the red granite detailing it didn't have prior to my test of epoxy strength. There's no water effect yet since I want to varnish it prior to putting that in.
I also moved the part with the fountain heads around so they are going to be spewing water in the widest part of the base, like they should have been in the first place. I know there's a couple of other things that are different from the directions but this is my fountain and I like it.
I'll try to get some closeups when the lighting is better.
Too busy doing stuff to stop and take pictures. Actually, either the item isn't able to be moved to a good place to take a picture, isn't dry, or isn't interesting enough yet.
The fountain has been reassembled. I finally took the time to remove the old epoxy and put it back together. That takes just as long as making it in the first place! I'll make a note of that for future reference - don't break.
The bookshelves that are shown below with the books and scrolls just don't work for the books. The shelves aren't tall enough to let any of them stand upright. ~sigh~ Measure twice, cut once. To be honest, the shelves were made waaaay in advance of the books. So I kind of have an excuse. So I made new ones.
The new shelves are made from balsa instead of the Hirst Arts wooden plank mold. I'm finding wood easier to use than the plaster pieces for things like this. Especially cutting and sanding to fit. The new shelves were assembled, detailed and stained. The stain will take overnight to dry completely so I'm just leaving them alone.
The books are done. I finished the last dozen or so on Saturday. I'm starting up a D&D3.5 game and some of my players were rolling up characters. Since we're using the straight rules I didn't have much to do besides tell them what region of Faerun they were from. They took the rest from there.
Finally, I cut the blocks for the new cabinet units to go behind the counter in the magic shop. Right now they're just blocks of wood. I need to add the fake drawer fronts and make them look much better. But I'll show a progress picture when there's something beyond a block of wood.
Good news is that Mega Miniatures has some figures I can use as shopkeepers and my friends want to combine an order so we get a break on shipping. If you haven't looked into John's figures I highly recommend you do so. They're a nice figure at a great price.
Yes, I said tedium. Making terrain isn't all sweetness and light. Sometimes it is boring, grueling work. Or at least repetitive. I personally don't like making a lot of the same thing at once but there are times when that needs to be done. So I sign onto my favorite chat channels and chat while I do this.
Here's how some of the books look with the covers completed. Please note, only a very few of them will actually have the covers showing. So the ones that look really odd and/or really bad won't be at the front of the stack. I looked at this as a time to practice my freehand. Yes, I know more practice is in order.
Also, since I couldn't really fit the books into the existing bookcases I have new ones being built. They're on the magnet board tonight and should be ready for detailing and painting in a day or so.
This thing might actually get done!
I'm having problems keeping the patterns and designs random. Especially the spine decorations. So if anyone has any hints go ahead and post them in a comment.
For reference, the shelf is 2 inches tall by 1 3/4 inches wide.
I used gel pens to decorate the books and alchemical symbols for the writing. Since the spines are going to be what's visible on most of the books I'm trying to get those looking good. And the books with good covers will be used more prominently.
I think this is going to work out very well!
Well, not completely finished. I still need to make them unique by painting and other means. But the tedious task of making and attaching the covers is done.
When I said I have a 'boatload of unfinished projects' I wasn't quite with it enough to actually detail some of those out.
The arena piece I'm showing is part of a number of them that are prepped. Prepped = fully assembled and with their grey stone paint. Technically they're done at this point. But I figured if they were meant to be decorative I would make them decorative, darn it.
My friend Abaroth has instructions for painting marble on his site here. Of course, I chose a color he didn't have detailed. I'm currently fascinated with using copper as my metal so I went with blue. (If it isn't immediately obvious to you why copper and blue are good together I recommend a quick read on color theory. Go ahead, I'll wait.) And now I'm completely in love with cobalt blue, which is the base color for my blue marble.
After I get these done I have a fountain that will be getting red granite accents, also based on Abaroth's instructions and also not a color he detailed. See a trend here? The fountain will then need to be varnished before I add the water effects. Varnishing after would dull the water.
Side note. I had already assembled the fountain when I saw that I had the fountain heads in the wrong place. I left it that way until I decided to see just how strong the epoxy bond was. Let's just say that I'll be using more epoxy to repair the breaks in the fountain.
After the fountain I'll be painting up a set of the arena pieces for a friend. We did a barter. He's not getting marble. But I am looking at doing the columns black with gold on the tops. The roof sections will be in burgundy and there will be burgundy runes on the columns to bring the color into the build more. Sounds more complicated than it is. I'll be doing one piece for his approval before painting them all like that.
Believe it or not there are projects after those. I have a Hirst Arts Dragon's Inn to finish. That one just needs a roof and some basing terrain.
The I have two small village shops that need to be completed - magic shop and a take-away food joint. The buildings are pretty much done but all the interiors need work. Lots of fiddly bits.
Lastly I have a huge dice roller that is being completed. It was started as a present for Mr. Rastl. He picked the design. And then 3/4 of the way to it being complete he decided it was too large. That was the third attempt at making a dice tower for him. Current popular opinion is to give him a bag of bricks and a bottle of glue. But I'll give it one more try.
Somewhere in here I need to complete a mini for a mini exchange. That's a double-blind where you put your name in the hat and the organizer picks who you paint for. And they also pick who paints for you. So you don't know who is painting the mini you're getting. I received my completed minis already and they're quite fun. More monsters to kill my players.
