LXXXV. The Cemetery Project vol.5

This week I built a piece of rough area terrain featuring stone tiles, empty planters and a small tree.

This piece was built almost entirely from scratch, and was a pleasure to do.

Materials used:

• MDF base
• sand + acrylic gel for the earth texture
• plaster tiles and miniature bricks
• home made planters and vases
• a branch and leaves from the Citadel Wood kit
• static grass tufts
• birch seed leaves
• paints and pigments

I used those planters I talked about in vol.2. The bead vases are here, too.

Just as I was preparing to invest in a few packs of Mini Natur grass tufts for the cemetery project, a friend told me about his recent discovery: Gamer's Grass. You can find a review in this month's issue of FPM and Old Fogey wrote about these tufts on his blog last week. So I'm just going to say that in my experience both the product and service are of good quality. At the same time these are more affordable than other brands I've used so far. I know where I'll be getting my grass from now on.

The rectangular tiles are Juweela bricks, and the square ones are of my own making. Step-by-step presented below.

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How I made my stone tiles:

I used a plastic movement tray for my mould.

Poured plaster in the tray.

Cut a grid using a ruler and markings on the sides as guides. This is best done when plaster is solid but still quite wet. I messed up a bit this time - some of my lines are visibly wobbly. I should be more careful next time.

When it dried completely I removed the tiles from the tray. Before applying them to the base I sanded their edges a bit and added cracks and other damage here and there.

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The Garden of Morr iron fence received a painjob as well. I have to admit the result is a tad underwhelming. Perhaps the stone parts are too dark? Not sure... I am planning to buy some Mini Natur ivy and make it grow on the fence; perhaps this will liven it up.

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LXXXIV. The Cemetery Project vol.4

The third mausoleum. I tried my best to explain what I did and how through a series of steps.

Complete list of paints used:

Abbadon Black (Citadel)
Burnt Umber (Vallejo Pigments)
Camouflage Green (Vallejo Game Color)
Cobra Leather (Vallejo Game Color)
Desert Yellow (Vallejo Game Color)
Gorthor Brown (Citadel)
Mechanicus Standard Grey (Citadel)
Natural Umber (Vallejo Pigments)
Rakarth Flesh (Citadel)
Skrag Brown (Citadel)
Typhus Corrosion (Citadel)
White Scar (Citadel)

The process:

The base had some bones and symbols I needed to get rid of first. Twin-tailed comets got scraped away. I covered parts of the base with a mix of Vallejo Heavy Transparent Gel, sand and black paint. While it was still wet I added a few broken Juweela bricks, some grit and wire roots for the roses that grow on the mausoleum walls. Before gluing the building on the base I painted the interior grey and put a black wash over that (not pictured).

The building and the base both got a basecoat of Citadel Rakarth Flesh. Then I went wild on the base with several layers of watered-down browns, greys and olive greens, as well as some earthy pigments. I left the stone graves and tiles lighter than the surrounding soil.

The building gets a light grey wash and an off white drybrush to add depth.

The roof gets a messy wash of watered down mix of Vallejo Desert Yellow and Citadel Abaddon Black. The result is greenish and dirty. The stone areas of on the base got a bit of this, too.

And another wash of the same. Getting darker and more saturated.

A wash of thinned-down Typhus Corrosion. This adds both texture and stronger, browner pigment.  When working with Typhus Corrosion don't use your best brush because this paint is quite violent to brushes. I learned that the hard way.  

When I was done with tinting the roof I gave the iron parts a coat of Abaddon Black.

I treated the light stone parts of the building with splashes of a thin greenish mix, especially near the ground.

Then I tried to emulate the moss I saw on my reference pictures. I painted most of the little dark green moss patches and off white lichen by hand. Some areas were splashed with paint to cover them in hundreds of tiny spots; this technique is usually great for blood or mud splatter.

The rusty parts were first textured with Typhus Corrosion, and then painted with one or two coats of diluted Citadel Skrag Brown. Note the thin streaks of rust running down the roof. Somewhere around this point I lightly drybrushed the stone parts of the base to highlight the sculpted details.

To make 3D moss on the graves around the mausoleum I mixed spongy flock, paint, PVA and water.

The leaves of the roses are dry, to match other foliage on the rest of my terrain. Since this is a graveyard I decided to paint the flowers white. White roses symbolise sorrow in Western culture. 

As finishing touches I glued a number of grass tufts and fallen leaves on the base, scattered some urns about and painted the rim black.

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AGRAM ARENA SUMMER TOURNAMENT

My club's annual summer tournament is slowly drawing near, so I'm helping spread the word. I'll be there both weekends, since I am be attending the Black Queen painting competition and the international Malifaux tournament. Here's the official announcement:

Dear friends!

It is time for another (13th annual) Agram Arena Summer Tournament!

We are in the second decade of organizing Arena events and this year's Agram Arena Summer is going to be held over two weekends:
 
11-12th of July 2015 - 40K International tournament + Black Queen International hobby and miniature painting competition

18-19th of July 2015 -Malifaux International tournament + Demo Games / Open play (Infinity and LOTR SBG on Saturday 18th; Flames of War and Warmachine on Sunday 19th)

Location: MS "Cvjetni trg", Miskecov prolaz 3, Zagreb, Croatia.
 
Entry: FREE!

Refreshing drinks for all players will be free during the tournaments.

Accommodation for Saturday night is also free for the 1st-time-comers (read more in the rules)!
Lunch is available at the price of 75 Kn (around 10 Euro) for both days (= 5 Euro/day)!

Check out the tournament rules & other info:

• with background: http://www.ums-agram.hr/app/webroot/dokumenti/AAS2015.pdf
• w/o background (printer friendly): http://www.ums-agram.hr/app/webroot/dokumenti/AAS2015-pf.pdf

Official languages of the tournament will be English and Croatian!

Registration:
40K - from 1st of June to 04th of July
Black Queen - from 18th of June to 04th of July (not neccessary - see the rulespack)
Malifaux - from 1st of June to 11th of July
Demo Games / Open Play - from 13th of July to 18th of July
(you can find guidelines on registration in the rules (check out the above link))!

If you need any other information please contact us at ums.agram@gmail.com or GSM +385 91 7620584

LXXXIII. The Cemetery Project vol.3

Done a bit of painting last week and now two of my mausoleums are finished. Unfortunately, I haven't got any work-in-progress pictures of this because my only camera was away on a business trip the entire week. However, I have one last unpainted mausoleum, so I still have a chance to do a step-by-step tutorial.

In order to get colour scheme ideas and to be able to get the weathering right I searched the web for pictures of old cemeteries. Among other things, I ran into this website, Spyderwood.com, that has a collection of photos from a number of Brittish and American cemeteries. As far as I understand, the site is mainly about crafting various Halloween props. The author has collected the graveyard pictures for inspiration. 

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LXXXII. The Cemetery Project vol.2

When seeking visual reference and inspiration for this project, besides searching the web for photographs and artwork I also took a stroll through Diablo III. The game is rich with fine-looking environments, and it's a great source for terrain ideas. There are two places I wished to visit this time: Cemetery of the Forsaken near Tristram and the vast and urban Briarthorn Cemetery in Westmarch. My Barbarian took selfies in breaks between fighting throngs of violent undead, so you will find some Diablo III screenshots illustrating this post. 

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 Urns and Planters

I found ready-made miniature planters, urns and jars in online stores of various companies. But I was a bit put off by their price. It's not that the items themselves are that expensive, but when one adds the price of shipping to Croatia the total becomes too much for that sort of thing. This is why I started thinking about a way to save money through cunning improvisation. I came up with a plan pretty quickly, and the very next day I hit a local arts&crafts shop to buy the necessery materials. So, I suppose my being stingy benefits my creativity. Anyway, here's the deal:

URNS

Groups of urns will be scattered across the bases of my graveyard terrain. Among other things, they will help visually blend the plastic Citadel terrain with my own scratch-built pieces. The idea comes straight from Diablo III. I'll show you how I make them.

The required materials: metal rings of small diametre and plastic and wooden beads of suitable size and shape. I found all these in a local arts&crafts shop. If you don't have one of those nearby, ebay is a good place to find the stuff. It's all cheap- each of those packets cost me around a dollar.

The beads. It is good to have a variety of shapes and sizes. The smaller ones here are 10mm tall, and the bigger ones about a 1/2 of an inch.

To make a rim around the mouth of an urn, just superglue a ring into place. The smaller ones I have look just fine even without a rim.

To blend the rings and the beads together, as well as to provide texture, coat them with Liquid Green Stuff. Depending on the kind of beads you start with, it might also be necessary to do a bit of non-liquid greenstuffing.

Finished, speed-painted urns.

Briarthorn Cemetery (Act V)

Crypt of the Skeleton King (Act I)

PLANTERS

Planters, too, suggested themselves as a nice detail to add while I was whirlwinding throught swarms of zombies. I've come up with two ways to create them - one very simple and the other more advanced.

 

Cemetery of the Forsaken (Act I)

The easy planters:

Some sort of plastic jewellery elements I found while browsing an arts and crafts shop. One can run into all sorts of things...

This was a no-brainer: I just glued the bits together. The trickier part of the process was finding the right materials to work with. These aren't that big, standing about 10-11mm tall.

I filled the soon-to-be miniature planters with sand and coated them with Liquid Green Stuff.

And this is how they look when painted. When adding them to my terrain I will probably put them on some sort of pedestals.

And the complicated ones:

These started as a single metal bell, with its knocker removed. I added rings to the sides for decoration, and then made a mould with Oyumaru so I can make plaster copies. The copies need to be hollowed out using a sculpting tool or a rotary tool (best done while the plaster is ready to get out of the mould but is still a bit wet). Then you can let them dry fully, fill them with sand and paint them. 

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Iron Fence

Briarthorn Cemetery (Act V)

I've done the preparation on the Garden of Morr iron fence.

One of the four iron fence pieces from the GoM set. I was worried that the skulls on and between spikes would be difficult to remove without mutilating the fence too much in the process. 

Luckily, I was wrong. After ten minutes of careful cuttting with my hobby knife I ended up with a very much skull-less fence. And the damage was minimal.

The holes left by the skulls were then filled with bits of plasticard, which was first cut to size and then carefully glued into place. Tweezers come in real handy for this kind of work.

Good as new. I did this to all four iron fence sections, and now they are ready for painting.

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Mausoleums

 

Cemetery of the Forsaken (Act I)

Basically, I have cleaned them up and prepared them for painting.

Mausoleum I. The four little club-shaped niches were emptied of skulls and candles and filled 2/3 of the way with plaster. I filled visible gaps with green stuff. And in total, I got rid of twenty skulls and eight twin-tailed comets. The tools used for this were a rotary tool, a hobby knife and a file. 

Mausoleum II.

Mausoleum III.