“A Slight Altar ‘cation” (Season of Scenery Challenge 2021)

Well as you may know last week I left you with my “Altar of Skulls” finished but looking rather like it was in the middle of a snowstorm (or just very white!), So I thought I’d better get some colour on it, no self-respecting cultist want’s to sacrifice virgins on a crisp white altar now do they! Now normally I would have just given this a coat of black and a couple of dry-brushes with dark and light grey, but hey this is “challenge” season, so I thought I’d push the boat out a bit and try something different.

Now the inspiration for this is from Matt over at “PM Painting” who a while back did a lovely bit of work on a “stone doorway” see here…

https://pmpainting.blogspot.com/2021/02/ruined-chapel-2.html

And so I thought I’d take a page out of his book and try mixing up my colours a bit. Now obviously he was working on brickwork rather than big chunks of stone, but I thought the principle should be the same. At this point I’d just like to point out that if the finished article looks like a “dog’s dinner”, then the blame will be pointed squarely at Matt, however if it comes out alright it is of course all down to my creative genius! (Sounds fair to me! 😉). Right so let’s get underway.

So after I’d painted the whole thing black with some “Blackboard” paint (well I wasn’t using my expensive (not) black spray undercoat on something this big!!) I set to work. Now I knew I wanted the edges to be in my usual basing colours so the outer edge was painted chocolate brown, and I also flicked this about her and there over the “rocky” part too, then I did the same with some scenic brown, dark grey and saddle (over the rocky part that is not the edges of course) till it was basically all covered bar the odd spot of black here and there, and looked a mess like this (a).

OK so now as it was discordant jumble of different shades and colours, it was time to start dragging it back together again, so I dry-brushed the whole thing with some khaki, and then the next day did the same again with some Eurasion flesh. Next I hit it with a black wash (b) and left it to dry overnight, It was starting to look better now less brown and more grey (strangely as apart from the little bit of dark grey I’d added at the start, it was mostly brown!!). Anyway I then gave it a dry-brushing with some coffee to lighten it up a bit again, and then after going back and forth over whether to use cream or white, I finally gave it a very light and selective dry-brushing with some cream, as I thought it would look less stark than the white (c).

Again following Matt’s example I then “tapped” in some small areas of German Field Grey (dark green) with an old stiff brush, then lightly “tapped” deep bronze green, olive and stone green over this so simulate lichen and mold here and there. Then it was time to turn my attention to the outer “ring”, and this area was done in my usual fashion of (in this case) touching up the chocolate brown then giving it a good dry-brushing with first khaki and then coffee, then some (reasonably) large areas were painted in scenic green and after I glued on the odd bit of rubberized moss, they were flocked with (Javis) “summer mix” hairy grass.

And that was it, I don’t usually bother to matt varnish my pieces of scenery, so I didn’t bother here. Overall I’m pretty happy with the end result, I do think the extra work has made it look better than just a couple of coats of grey, I have no idea where the idea came to me, must just have been one of my patented flashes of genius! (Sorry, Matt who? 🙄 )

I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with figures you’ve seen before for the photos, I would have liked to have had a daring hero rushing to rescue some supine sacrifice from a knife wielding cultist leader, perhaps when I finally get those figures I’ll dig this out again for those photographs.

Till next time, stay safe and enjoy the scenery, cheers Roger.