What's on my desk? Part 23.

Good morning!

Time for a progress report. :-)

I received a package from Ammo-Mig. First I ordered some Quake Crackle Creator. It's supposed to create the effect of cracked ground (I got 2183 Old Blacktop and 2184 Scorched Sand) and I was going to use it on the bases of the figures. You're supposed to apply it relatively thick and even (the jar recommends using a palette knife) and the thicker you apply it, the bigger the cracks that will form.

To be honest, I'm not very impressed. The product does what it says, but the effect is not really convincing. It also doesn't adhere well to the surface, even though I primed the bases as per the instructions. Maybe it's me; I'll experiment a bit more with it this week...

The other product I ordered from Mig were some Drybrush Paint greens. I have used these in the past and they are very good. I used 0607 Green on the edges of the dreadnought armor plates, then sponged some 0606 Medium Green as chipping base. The chips were then painted with Van Dyck Brown oil paint. I'm going to add some streaking, but I think the dreadnought is almost finished.

For the dreadnought base, I made a section of cobble stone road out of Apoxie sculpt. It's a two-part epoxy clay. You knead two equal parts into a smooth putty and sculpt whatever you want, using water to keep your tools from sticking. It remains malleable for a couple of hours and hardens completely in 24 hours. Great stuff! I used it for my Among Us vignette some years ago and it's still good.

So the first step is applying a relatively even layer to the figure base. I used a protractor to press in the long joints, then sharpened a piece of wood to make the individual cobbles. A piece of cork was then cut and used to imprint a bit of surface detail. A couple of stones were also removed completely. Here it is after 24 hours:

Next step: painting! I started with a layer of Citadel Wraithbone primer. When dry, I started picking out random cobbles with Tamiya XF-82 (not the best choice actually, as it's a little bit too blue; you're aiming for a more neutral grey).

That's the first colour. Then you just take whatever paints you have near you and randomly paint cobbles. I used browns, greys, tan, black and wraithbone (off-white). You end up with a very bright and colourful piece of road:

To bring it all together and tone down the contrast, we'll use washes and pigments. Here it is after just one layer of dark wash (A.Mig-1008). It's looking a lot less bright, and the imperfections I stamped into the stones with the cork have filled and are popping out.

Next up is some pigments to fill the joints. I'll probably put some grass into the missing cobbles to bring back some colour.

One more thing I've been working on is an old 1/35 scale Miniart house. It's, again something that's been on my Shelf of Doom for years. It's mostly made from vacuform plastic, and needs a LOT of sanding, filling and more sanding. I decided to reinforce the base somewhat with 5x5mm balsa strips:

When done, it'll make a great base for all sorts of vehicles.

One more thing: the French tank crew. The faces are basically done. I've given their uniforms a base coat using acrylic paints. The rest will be done with oil paints.

That's it! See you next week!