“A grave development”

Imitation is the sincerest form of compliment they say, in which case Simon you are most welcome! Mr Moore recently posted some excellent “headstone objective markers” and as I’ve decided that August is going to be scenery month here at “Webb towers” (we don’t actually have any “towers” as such, I decided the moat and dungeon was enough), I thought I’d dig out the tombstones I myself had lying about and make some of these myself. You can see Simon’s excellent versions here…

http://fantorical.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/our-memorial-masons-are-skilled-in.html

But anyway on to mine, the three metal memorials in the picture to the right are by Bob Olley and formally come from his Olley’s Armies collection (these are now owned by someone else but I’m not sure who, sorry), and the smaller plastic one is of course part of the GW plastic ”Skellys” box set from a few years ago. All of these were mounted onto 40mm hexagonal plastic bases, these are actually “Glyph” tokens from the “Heroscape” board game (as I have shed loads of these and I thought their shape would help distinguish them from my round figure bases). I mounted the plastic headstone on a blob of greenstuff to add a bit of height to its somewhat diminutive dimensions, and as it was still a bit on the boring side compared to the other three I thought I’d spice it up a bit by adding an arm emerging from grave in front of the stone, this comes from one of the Mantic Zombies I “inherited” from Myles last year that I didn’t paint up as it was broken off at the ankles. This meant I had to wait till both the greenstuff under the headstone and beneath the arm were dry before I could “tetrion” the bases. This did give me the opportunity to spread out a little of the filler onto a “Pringles” lid and to let this dry as well (I’ll tell you what this was for in a bit).

So next job was to “Tetrion” around the bases and blend in the bases of the headstones I built up the middle sections into an elongated “hump” to represent the graves themselves, before doing around the “arm” I took the now dry filler I mentioned before off of the lid it was on and breaking it up into small irregular pieces glued some of these around the base of the arm as soil cracking and breaking away around the emerging hand., the rest of the base was then built up around in the same manner as the others. Once this was dry it was out for a coat of matt black, before all the stones were heavily dry-brushed in dark grey. Next I mixed up a mid grey colour using black and white, and this was then dry-brushed over the stones as well. Then I took some stone green and dry-brushed this over certain areas, and a much lighter mix of the black and white was used over other areas. Now a couple of the pieces have ivy growing up the sides and the odd tuft of grass around the bases, the ivy was undercoated in German field blue then highlighted in light green and lime green (partially mixed on the model), deep bronze green was used as an undercoat on the grass and scenic green formed the highlight on these. I then brushed on a wash of matt black across the top edges of the pieces and added some stripes down the faces to simulate dirt and water marks from years out in the open. Turning to the emerging arm next, I laid down and undercoat of flesh tone seven and then added stone green and pale flesh highlights that were blended into the still wet paint, once dry I added some bright red “bloody” marks to the hand and figures. The arm was then given a coat of Quickshade so it would match the rest of my figures, but the rest of the models were left clear as I don’t Quickshade my scenery.

Bases next and I used my usual colours and technique’s to do these, the only additions being I added a couple of pieces of “rubberized” moss to a couple of the bases to add a little interest, and added a tiny bit of the chocolate brown around the base of the arm to show were soil had stuck to it on the way out. Then it was out for a spray coat of matt varnish and they were done (well I did decided that the red on the figures looked a little to “pink” now so touched up the red again, but then the really were done).

I decided to drag out my “Mantic Zombies”, to form a little set dressing for the photos, as Christie Brinkly wasn’t available, and that’s it some more bits of scenery that have been hanging about far too long finally painted. I’m rather pleased with how they came out in the end.

Till next time, Cheers Roger.