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I did some work on the frames of the windows on this building that will eventually have an interior and a second floor. I rubbed air dry clay around the cardstock window frames and door frame to fill in any gaps that were caused by the dried glue and warp:




I'm hoping it will look like concrete when it's all painted. Next up I filled in some gaps on this piece that I refuse to make an interior for:








I even bothered to try to draw in some ruts where the door would've opened up to. I'm not sure if they got obliterated or not when I applied sand:




I applied the sand less densely in front of the door to try to simulate frequent wear:


Next I took this poorly painted thing:



And smashed it for parts. I took all the intact basillica windows and filed down the interior window frames as well as cleaned up the edges where I would eventually rejoin them together and plucked off all the rivets from the long joiny posts:



Then I cut very sophisticated interior window covers:


And glued them in place with wood glue. I had to hold them in place for about a minute or they started to come up at the edges:



Then I needed to account for the fact that the foam was slightly higher than the walls of the first floor, so I measured and filed/cut grooves for the second story walls:



Then started gluing on the second story (I decided to use the exterior of the basillica walls because I intend to put a flat roof on this piece):



And that's as far as I got on that project last Thursday. I was supposed to go up again today, but a snow storm hit and I've postponed till Monday. I've cleared a space in the back of my car for my tub of jungle terrain because I totally forgot to bring it up last time. I'm also currently in negotiations with a more local store for another terrain commission so this blog might start getting pretty crowded with projects. Anyway, thanks for looking and have an awesome day everyone! C&C always welcome.

Here's the next piece of that giant building. I went back and looked at my building notes...and cried. I sure did make this build super complicated for myself. Basically, I can't cut a straight line to save my life. So the idea of creating a massive building made up of intricately hand-cut puzzle pieces is completely insane. I took this oversized and just a little too short panel, measured it against the building as a whole and chopped it down to size:



More pictures on that in a moment. Then I took a much smaller piece that was, no surprise, exactly the right size and shape, & cut grooves in both edges so it would fit flush with the jutting out part of the bottom of what I've made so far:




See how that last picture illustrates the impossibility of straight? Yeah...

Dry fit:



Everything glued and pinned into place:






Have I mentioned how much I dislike assembling intact buildings? Anyway, thanks for looking and have an awesome day! C&C always welcome.

Good progress. Interested to see how you paint up the blocked in windows.

 Dr H wrote:
Good progress. Interested to see how you paint up the blocked in windows.

Thanks, Dr H. I'm pretty curious about that myself. My intention is to black prime the interiors so it's nothing but darkness within, but I'm not really sure if I should paint the cardstock to emulate a glass window pane or if I should make it look like a metal shutter. Any ideas? Input appreciated.

The problem I see with making them shutters is that they are on the inside of the windows, so you would still have to paint in the glass.

However, a gloss black would probably work fine as a dark interior though glass.

A full multi-story builing! That will stand tall in the battles!

I feel your pain about making life difficult for yourself... Keep it going though, I'm impatient (ha!) to see how this build turns out! Oh, and on the window front, my vote would be for shutters - more in keeping with the industrial feel, and probably easier to achieve than glass..?

Warboss_waaazag loving your work mate, keep it going


Alan

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:

 Dr H wrote:
Good progress. Interested to see how you paint up the blocked in windows.

Thanks, Dr H. I'm pretty curious about that myself. My intention is to black prime the interiors so it's nothing but darkness within, but I'm not really sure if I should paint the cardstock to emulate a glass window pane or if I should make it look like a metal shutter. Any ideas? Input appreciated.

I think I'd be tempted to;
Cut out the windows
Put in clear plastikard in the window spaces for window panes
Put black/dark dark grey painted card at the back

That way you get some depth in your windows and the black card stops light getting in and giving away that the building is empty.

 JoeRugby wrote:

I think I'd be tempted to;
Cut out the windows
Put in clear plastikard in the window spaces for window panes
Put black/dark dark grey painted card at the back

That way you get some depth in your windows and the black card stops light getting in and giving away that the building is empty.

Hmmm, that might win the prize. I'm limited to working with materials at the site, but I'm pretty sure I can find something that could stand in for clear plasticard. Like blister plastic. I think I might buff one side to see if that gives it a more realistic feel. Glossy side out, buffed side in. We'll see, I'm going back up to the store tomorrow.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

So this next piece is a shorter version of this hill. It started looking like a block of butter. So I used the air dry clay to cover that up. This thing I broke apart and glued to 4 separate bases:







Once the clay was one I started hand-pressing aquarium rocks into it to create the first layer of detail:








Next came the pulverized walnut shell:






And finally the sand:



This Thursday I go up to see how it has survived the past 2 weeks and hopefully seal them.

Next project are these craters. They were literally glued to old AOL cds:



This is what they looked like before I started working on them:


And then after. This is just building up the base with air dry clay and mashing various sizes of texture into the drying clay. I used the larger aquarium gravel sparingly as bombs have a tendency to annihilate what they land on, turning everything into pulverized dust. I also wet my finger and smoothed the interior craters after I applied the texture to try to sublimate the debris into the clay.





Here you can see the styrofoam the previous builder tried to use to build up the lip of the crater:


I used the sand sparsely on these, because I thought it would look better:





I believe this brings me up to date. Next photos will either be from a new project or from this Thursday's sojourn. Thanks for looking! Have an awesome day! C&C always welcome.

Ah well, if you are willing to cut out the card to add "glass", then yes, do that.

Good work on the rocks 'n' craters.

 Dr H wrote:
Ah well, if you are willing to cut out the card to add "glass", then yes, do that.

Good work on the rocks 'n' craters.

Thanks, Dr H. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. It was a lot of effort to make the cut outs and now that the building is mostly assembled, I'm not sure I want to alter it that much. They aren't paying me a fortune, so I'm not hell bent on perfection. We'll have to see come this Thursday.

Such desert like terrain! makes me thirsty!

Just a quick update. I did some more work on that shanty. I ran out of red sand and had to break open the black sand bag. So I added a line of finer dirt along the edge of the building's base and scattered across the top of the roof. My intention is to put some grass growing up there, too.





While the glue is still wet and the sand has crawled up the side of the walls (like it does when you sift it onto a piece) I use my thumb or index finger to scrape the sand off the lower wall. Otherwise when it dries it looks like you've applied sand to a wall and not like dirt has collected at the base of said wall. I swiped it to one side and let it get wedged into the crack between the corner planks and the wall itself.

Here's the roof:



And then I base coated the entire thing in this horrible brown poop color:



Thanks for looking! Have an awesome day! C&C always welcome.

Always enjoy your buildings, and that is a truly disgusting colour

Nasty color. That really has to be from the Oops we mixed it wrong shelf at the DIY.

The screen used for the windows, I can't figure out where it is from, and I don't recall you mentioning it. Help an old man with a fading memory?

Shanty is how big? if large enough, maybe a small shanty bar?

 Red Harvest wrote:
Nasty color. That really has to be from the Oops we mixed it wrong shelf at the DIY.

The screen used for the windows, I can't figure out where it is from, and I don't recall you mentioning it. Help an old man with a fading memory?

I actually didn't build this one, but the window screens would be from a needlepoint mesh. They sell them in craft stores, fabric stores, and yarn shops, typically. They come in a variety of colors and shapes, & density of holes. They need to be soaked in warm soapy water before use, though because they can be quite waxy. I use it as cheap window screens, deck plating, and the like.

Also, this poop color came from the "mistake" collection at the local DIY store (in the states that's Lowes or Home Depot). There's usually a paint section where they will make custom colors for customers. Occasionally those mixes turn out terrible, but they save the samples for people like me to ask for and buy on the super cheap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Shanty is how big? if large enough, maybe a small shanty bar?

It's barely 4" (10cm) square. It almost annoys me that whoever built it just made one. Forces me to contemplate making more. They're simple buildings to construct, but they are ugly as hell.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Always enjoy your buildings, and that is a truly disgusting colour

Thanks very much!

Ah limited occupancy hovels! A whole town would make a good battle zone

Ah needlepoint. Thanks for the answer. I thought it might be something like that. And I get a lot of paint that way. The employees at the local DIY seem to have trouble with mixing browns and greens, which suits me fine.

This may sound wrong but...

I am a fan of your Poo Hut.

Yea that definitely sounded wrong. :*(

Pooh insulation against the acid rains

 JoeRugby wrote:
This may sound wrong but...

I am a fan of your Poo Hut.

Yea that definitely sounded wrong. :*(

Ooooh....ah...thanks?

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Ah limited occupancy hovels! A whole town would make a good battle zone

Yeah, I was thinking the same. It's more work to do before this project finally gets finished. Sigh. A builder's work is never done.

Anyway, moving on to other poop topics. The cd craters survived 2 weeks without my attention I would say, "okay". Only one had real, significant damage and that was the one that had insulation foam on it and not just pulverized walnut shell. Most of the damage was due to cracking of the dried clay and I expected as much to happen:








I touched them all up with more debris and black craft sand:




And repaired the damaged one:



Before base coating them and the ridge piece with poop:



I should have these craters painted up next Thursday when I go back. Thanks for looking. Have an awesome day. I have to go cook now because starving (lamb burgers and cauliflower). C&C always welcome!

The cracked clay could have been used for say, deserty scenery? Still repairs seem to have fixed the cracking issues.

Oh and the Hanomag is about 7.5 inches long, a Beefy ride!

 shasolenzabi wrote:
The cracked clay could have been used for say, deserty scenery? Still repairs seem to have fixed the cracking issues.

The air dry clay is going to crack. That's not something that can honestly be solved easily. The cracking is because I'm applying it very thinly and not immediately sealing it. The clay becomes brittle very quickly. If I were to make dry earth or deserty terrain I would use a crackle medium instead of the clay, personally.

Anyway, thanks for commenting. Now I can add another update and have it post!

Since I already put up a picture of the ridge base-coated, I'll show my progress on that. This is what it looked like when I came back and sealed it with a 70:30 mix of wood glue and water:




Again, you can see some minor cracking in the clay, but nothing that threatens the integrity of the whole piece. Then it got this poop coat:


Followed by a heavy drybrush of this blue:







Followed by a heavy drybrush of this red:


I did some basic mixing of the colors right on my palette:


For this effect (sorry about how some of the photos look like the color has been blown out, the local lighting really muted the blues and reds, so I was forced to use the auto adjust feature on the uploads to make the colors more noticeable and true):







If you'll notice, in some cases I didn't even wait for the underlying brown to completely dry. This helps blend the colors on the piece a little better. Next up I used this color:


And again palette blended:



To get this:






And then I went completely flying rodent gak crazy and started painting individual stones in a medium grey I forgot to take a picture of, the oxide red, and the original poop brown.








And finally used this:


As my final highlight top coat:




And then I glued on some flock:










Thursday I seal the flock on and add static grass and then I can finally call this piece done. Phew! Thanks for looking and have an awesome day. C&C always welcome.

Oh, that thing looked so disturbing when it was just painted with your poo paint.

Good job on the final result.

"Quick! get behind that ridge! set the mortar for firing ASAP!"

I don't know why I think this hill looks like a wolf's head, but I do. Here's the same process I did on the ridge, except this time in larger Line of sight blocking form.

Heavy cracking, but nothing that actually damaged the piece:




Horrible poop color base coat:


Followed by indigo drybrush:






Then red oxide overbrush:









Then palette mix of off-white and red to create a pinkish color to drybrush-highlight:










Hand painted individual stones:






And white highlight to top it all off:






And finally flock:






Here's a picture of both recent hills together, with a metal scout for scale purposes:


And then a bunch of shots of what these might have looked like before I began, because I took that tall stack of styrofoam and broke it apart to mount on 3 separate bases:










And I leave you with what appears to be a bug that was not only crushed to death by the masonite, but also seems to have become embedded into it as well:


Thanks for looking and have an awesome day.

Tomorrow I go back to the site and continue work on the numerous projects I've begun, including that really tall building. And, with luck, I'll remember to bring my jungle terrain collection to take photos of while I'm there. Cheers!

The good news is that I finally remembered to put my jungle terrain in the car. The bad news is that I still haven't arrived at the site yet. But fear not! I WILL get pictures of my jungles in all their glory today! And post about a million (give or take) pictures of the results soon. Cheers!