I've Been Working on the Railroad

Malifaux night at my FLGS is tomorrow, and I want to try out some of my new models for the Arcanists.  While the models are the new ABS plastic, and pretty cool, they don't have a good base.  Rather than go for base inserts I wanted to do something special.  There's going to be a whole theme surrounding the Arcanist models from book 4 that revolves around railroads, and that's what I wanted to try.  My ingrediants are the bases, some balsa wood, and some woodland scenics ballast.  I cut the balsa wood into approx 1.5"-2" sections and glued them to the base.



After I gave the glue some time to dry I painted on some thinned out PVA glue, and then covered the base with the ballast.  After shaking it off I noticed a few thin patches so I gave it another coat of glue followed by more ballast.



I'm really happy with how these bases are turning out.  All I need now are some miniature I-beams.  I know that they have something that'll work in polystyrene, but my local hobby stores don't carry it.  One store I know of up North carries exactly what I need, but I'll have to wait until I travel that way.



The models haven't actually been glued on yet, but as you can see I can lay things out so that I can do without the beams for now.  Once I let the glue dry for the ballast I'll get my models set up on there.




Willie and the Rail Golem are looking really good!  I can't wait to get the bases finished up so I can get them painted up!

A Whole New World

What I started several weeks ago has finally come to a finish.  The scenery I had originally meant to create in a weekend ended up taking much longer to finish.  It was one of those situations where I accomplished what I wanted to, but then said to myself, "You know, I can do a little more."  Once I completed that, 'little more,' it turned into another little more.  I started with this:



And ended up with this:





My original pieces were just going to be pieces on a base with a simple three-layer pattern of drybrushing.  Base coat of dark grey, heavy drybrush of light grey, and a light touch of white drybrushed over the top.



Then I added texture and basing around the exposed base.  After it all got painted up I felt that it looked too bland so I added a wash to help bring out the texture.



Finally I knew that I wanted to add more depth.  As these were supposed to be ruins I wanted dead leaves and moss to be apart of these pieces.  I used scenery bits from Gale Force 9 to add both a touch of color and depth, and the moss is from Woodland Scenics grass.





You may remember me talking about the blob on the fountain from my previous post.  After I uploaded that post I heard from several people that the blob looked ok and that it would be nice to see it painted as such.  So I went and painted on some primer, and painted it green.  My original intent was to use 5-minute epoxy to add a glazed coat over it, but my epoxy had run out and I ended up using a different brand.  Turns out it's not translucent, and so my green blob is more blue with a slight green hue.  Still not the best, but it will work just fine.

I also painted up some accessories.  These are obstacles to either place on the field and add some more spice overall.



Overall I'm happy with how things turned out.  There's a decent amount of scenery, and if I make a few more pieces down the road I could easily pull together a complete set for a game table.  I like the sound of that.