“Summer Scenery Challenge, A Bit’ Bitty”

For those of you who are not in the know the next two months are “Summer Scenery Challenge” months, this is being run by Dave Stone over at “Wargames Terrain Workshop”* (follow link at the bottom of the page for the rules and details). Now I have signed up for this even though scenery is not really one of my strong points, and there are some serious scenery experts taking part (you know who you are!), but I do hope to get a couple of pieces done before I go back to work, however I will have to order in some bits to complete said pieces and when you add in drying times etc… progress is going to be sporadic at best. So along with the “scenic bits” I decided to try and paint up a few figures as well, you know “as and when” I get the chance, so I thought I’d begin with a bit of an apology as rather than my usual way of working which is start something see it through to the end and post it, things are going to get a bit “messy” over the coming weeks with things progressing a bit here and a bit there. But we’ll see how we get on.

So I have dug out eight of my “Mega Miniatures” dungeon characters (see right), and I hope to work on these alongside the above. These have now been based and undercoated in matt black and also this week I have finished the cavalry and “Battle Mage” to go along with my 15mm Elven army as well as “Quickshading (strong tone), basing and varnishing them. But now onto the main event, my scenery…

OK so the first piece of scenery I want to work on is a decorative “pond” for my “Into the Wasteland” project. I’ve had this idea for a couple of years now, and even started work on it back then, taking a plastic lid from a whipping cream tub (honestly that was the only reason I bought the jam and scones!), I was going to fill it with “Plaster of Paris” but didn’t have any, so I used “Tetrion” filler instead, now this didn’t work out as well as I’d planned, so it got dumped on my table and forgotten.

Till now that is, as I have decided to re-visit this idea, so tearing away the pot lid (It adheres a lot better than plaster!) the resultant casting was a bit rough to say the least, but with some filling with more filler it might work to my advantage. The gaps on the inside of the ring (I’d tried to fill just around the edge of the lid) were given a rough filling with more “Tetrion” and it was then glued down onto an MDF base, I then attacked it with a scalpel. First job was to cut six vertical lines around the outside to look like it was make of six separate pieces, the defects in the casting were then worked out into cracks and missing “lumps” in the concrete.

Next I spread some more filler around the edge of the pond and flattened this out as best I could with the side of a wet knife, once this was dry I took the scalpel again and carved cracks and joins into this to give a broken tile effect. And that is where I’m up to as I write, hopefully by this time next week more progress will have been made.

Till then, stay safe. Cheers Roger.

• https://wargamesculptorsblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/summer-of-scenery-challenge.html