LXXXIX. The Ogre

Being busy with the Cemetery Project and several commissions, it's been a long while since I last painted a miniature for my own pleasure.  But after the Black Queen painting competition last month I got really inspired and I couldn't resist the urge. The result of one whole day of manic painting is this Ogre, whom I intended for the Fairy faction in Gardens of Hecate.

 The 30mm resin miniature is produced by Mannikin Studios and it's based on an illustration by Arthur Rackham.

I put him on a 30mm base. He's quite slim, but he stands more than a head taller than a human.

The colour scheme is the same as with the other members of the Fairy faction.

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Apart from Black Queen, my club also organised an international Malifaux tournament the week after. I must say it was two great and busy weekends. I met new people, had a lot of fun. Won some prizes. :)

And this is the loot.  I must point out that these came with prizes in form of miniatures, supplies and  store credit from the tournament's many sponsors.

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Then my brother and I made a trip to the city of Prague for a few days. We saw lots of fantastic architecture and I had plenty of good beer. Sadly, we didn't get the chance to visit the famous Old Jewish Cemetery.

St. Nicholas Church. Dome interior.

St. Nicholas Church. Main entrance.

St. Vitus Cathedral.

St. Vitus Cathedral.

One very fancy lamp post.

While I was traveling, a package arrived for me containing Renedra gravestones and MiniNatur ivy. The work on the graveyard terrain continues... 

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LXXXVIII. The Cemetery Project vol.8

Wayside shrines have always fascinated me. Found in many cultures, built by the road, by the field, at a crossroads, at the entrance or inside the village or town; they come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and materials. People erected them as a thanks to their deity or patron, as penance, for protection, as memorials... They served for religious rituals, but also to mark borders or as landmarks for travellers and pilgirms.  

When planning my graveyard terrain collection I decided to include a few shrine pieces. The possibilities are endless, and designing and building them was a lot of fun. I'm sure I'll make more at some point.

Crucifix in a field.

Crucifix from Gaber, Hrvatsko zagorje.

Chapel-shrine in Prkovci, Slavonija.

Column shrine in Lobor, Hrvatsko zagorje.

A street in Belica, Međimurje.

The above five photographs were taken from the book Croatian traditional architecture by Zdravko Živković. Croatian Ministry of Culture made the book available as a PDF for free (LINK). Lots of pictures in it, so anyone building village terrain will surely find inspiration and/or reference material. The text is in both Croatian and English.

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On to the actual terrain:

Crucifix I

A very simple build: plaster grave stone with a metal crucifix pendant glued on top. A base is not even required.

Again I find my terrain materials among jewellery elements. These are all from ebay.

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Crucifix II

The base has stone tiles made of carved plaster, matching the stone tiles on the three mausoleums' bases.The colour scheme is the same as well, with rusty metals and moss-covered stone.

The pillar on which the crucifix stands is a plaster cast of a plastic  Garden of Morr bit. I removed the roses, though.

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Crucifix III

Wooden crucifix. These are frequent in rural environments. I used the same materials and thechniques as when making grave markers. The base was made (out of air-drying clay) to fit into tree slots on the Citadel Wood kit's base, but just like Citadel trees this piece can also stand on the board by itself.

Crucifixes I and II in WIP stage.

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Shrine

Shrine with a black Madonna relief inside.

It started as a plaster copy of a grave stone from Zenit Miniatures. The upper part of the structure, which is was to house the relief, is balsa. At a later stage I covered the wooden parts in plaster.

Just like the corpus I put on my wooden crucifix, the Madonna was copied from a religious ornament using Oyumaru. The former was reproduced in green stuff and the latter in plaster.

I wanted the roof to match the roofs of the mausoleums so I added deails with cardboard, plasticard rivets and plastic spikes.

The shrine has a removable glass window made of balsa and transparent foil. I attempted an UHU glue cobweb, but I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with it.

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CANDLES

 

There are various approaches to sculpting miniature candles. This is how I do mine:

Candles began as little plastic tubes (the ones I have are normally used in fishing).

The look of melted wax was achieved with PVA. It takes several layers of glue, carefully applied with a toothpick or a similar tool, to achieve the desired effect.

When the glue is dry completely, the candles get a coat of white paint. In order to get a waxy finish, another layer of PVA is applied.

When putting them on the base I made sure there were little pools of wax around the candles. The finishing touch are the wicks, which are very thin wire painted black.

LXXXVII. The Cemetery Project vol.7

John Singer Sargent: Graveyard in the Tyrol, 1914

After a month-long hiatus, I'm back with the most important and the most obvious type of cemetery terrain: graves. I wanted a mix of different types of grave markers in terms of shape and material, and a mix of different ways of basing (single, row, area). This is what I've done so far:

John Sargent's watercolour painting (above) made me start thinking about ways to make wrought iron crosses.

I was afraid they would be too easy to break, but it turns out they don't fall apart too readily. The balsa crosses put together using PVA are sturdy enough, too.

Single graves with wood and metal crosses. All scratch built.

Single graves with stone markers. The first marker was made of plaster, from scratch; the second one is a plaster copy of a Zenit Minitures grave marker; the third is from the Garden of Morr set.

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Grave crosses can come in a myriad of shape varieties, sizes and materials.  Below you'll find half a dozen representative step-by-step examples I've prepared.

Materials used:

• PVA glue
• superglue
• balsa: 1mm, 2mm
• plastic fence
• pins
• metal rings
• paperclips
• card
• paper
• plastic tubes 

1. The most basic form of a wooden cross; 2mm balsa.

2. Wooden cross with a wooden roof. Starting from the basic shape, I added extra detail with 1mm balsa.

3. This one has a metal roof, and a plate on its front. Both are cardboard, carefully cut with a scalpel and glued into place with superglue.

4. This iron cross was assembled out of parts of a miniature railway fence, with addition of a cardboard circle and a metal ring to keep the parts together. The bits were glued with superglue. I blended them together with PVA.

5. This one has parts of another kind of fence. There's also a roof made of card. The extra four decorative swirls are ordinary printer paper covered in superglue, carefully set into place with a pair of tweezers.

6. The final example uses thin paperclip for the basic cross shape. The decorative elements on the tips are slices of a tiny plastic tube (these tubes are used in fishing, for keeping the float in place on the line).

This was good for a start, and I've learned some things through experimenting. I have six individual graves and three of these bases of grave markers in a line, but for a decent-looking cemetery I'll need at least twice as many.

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Another thing I made in the meantime is this crucifix:

This is the first of the several shrine pieces I've planned. But more of them and more about them (including how to make them, of course) in my next post.

As promised in the previous post's comment section, here is a group shot of all terrain pieces I've done in the Cemetery Project so far.

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And finally, I have a recommendation for you: books by László Adóba. Four of them arrived recently in my club's library, and I must say they're fantastic. They are all clear and very well written. The photographs are of good quality and the explanations are easy to follow.

Building Dioramas: Stone objects may be the most useful one for what I'm currently doing. This is the table of contents:

FOREWORD
Chapter I: Flower holders
Chapter II: Tombstones
Chapter III: Fountains, waterworks
Chapter IV: Equestrian monument
Chapter V: Mausoleum
Epilogue and preview

The author uses things like cardboard and polystyrene for his tombstones, which is something I haven't tried yet. There are instructions on building several different examples of fountains, which will definiely come in handy at some point in my terrain project.

Building Dioramas: Accessories teaches you how to make a whole array of different things: chairs, bookcases, bathtubs, lightbulbs, chicken roasts, pots, cutlery, iron fence, benches, curtains, a pool table complete with balls and cues...  Table of contents:

Foreword
First chapter - Furniture
Second chapter - Miscellanous objects
Third chapter - Bathroom equipment
Fourth chapter - Food and tableware
Fifth chapter - Objects made of iron

Iron crosses in Chapter five of the book. I've picked up some useful tips here.

The other pair of books, dealing with terrain&vegetation and urban scenes. Dirt, mud, rocks, trees, flowers, grass, bricks, cobblestones, roofs, doors, windows...