All Along the Watchtower: Part 3 of 3

OK!  Back to the watchtower.  We need to create a way to get in, so we turn to our trusted baked white sculpey.  I cut a piece to shape, and set down to carving in the texture!

I drew out my pattern of stones and wood planks...

And then starting carving out the texture with a variety of carving tools (you can see a few of these in the image).  I mostly use wood carving tools, but I will also use a scribe tool that works on plastic.

You can see the wood panels carved, and the surrounding stones as well.  To get the deeper textures, you need to really carve these pretty aggressively.  Don't be too bummed if the white sculpey cracks along the way.  You can always glue it back together!

The textures are fully carved.

The door is glued to the foam, using wood glue.  If you use super glue, you will melt your pink foam!

Once the door was set, I took a few pieces of the cereal box to make some metal bars to hold the wood planks together.  I also used some polystyrene tubing as hinges.

The door handle was created by gluing the rounded end of a paper clip to a piece of the cereal box.  We have thousands of those rounded paper clip ends all over the house, it seems, since that is what we use to pin out miniatures!  Cathy always finds them with her bare feet in the summer, which she enjoys very much!

Here's a slightly better view of that door handle.

I made a few windows in the same manner as the corner pieces on the walls, alternating the bigger and smaller pieces.

I used some oxide paste to cover some of the gaps in the corners where the pieces of cereal box don't quite line up.  That's why I was not so careful about that process.  I knew I wanted to use the flex paste, as it would not only close those gaps, but make a nice texture as well.

I covered a bunch of other gaps with the flex paste, and made some texture here and there where I thought it would be needed.

I brought out the sand and gravel to make the rock part of the base a little more realistic, and fill in the gaps between the base of the tower and the rocks.

With the rocks and gravel complete, we have a tower that is waiting for paint!!!

Stay tuned for that in a few days!

All Along the Watchtower: Part 2

Well, time for the next stage!

I wanted to create a stone texture along the edges of the tower.  I grabbed a bunch of cereal boxes to get some heavier stock paper.  That was cut into strips, and then small pieces.

They were not completely uniform, so that they would be a bit more random.

I glued them to the corners, alternating the longer and shorter pieces like this:

This was done on each of the corners...

For the platform, I cut larger pieces, and also cut some pieces of thinner paper to get some variation.

These were placed along the platform as randomly as possible.  Since they will be covered by flock, leaves, and miniatures, I didn't get too crazy with this process!

To cover the seam where the two pieces of foam were glued together, I used some leftover bits of paper.

Get ready for the final stage, which includes sculpting the door!  Stay tuned...

All Along the Watchtower: Part 1 of 3

This particular terrain building project will be featured in one of the Painting Pyramid videos.  I built this piece to get a better idea of the materials that would be needed, how much time each particular aspect of the tower took to make, etc.

I began by cutting a 2 inch thick section of foam into a few shapes.  The rock formation was done using a technique that you can find in several previous terrain building threads.  Onto this was added a few rectangular pieces that would form the 'body' of the tower.

This was kept relatively small, as I didn't want to create a massive tower!  You can see the 28mm figure which was used for scale.  It was important to have that around when it came time to make the platform on top.

I still had some very thin pink foam left, so that was cut into the correct sizes and shapes.  By measuring the height of the archer, I got a better idea of how the crenellations should be spaced.

I made some marks on the foam (after cutting a beveled edge along the top first), so that I knew where to make my cuts.

Once I had this first piece, I used it to measure the other 3 walls...

Then it was time to glue them on!

The basic platform has now taken shape.

I cut out some supports for the platform out of a few scraps of pink foam.  These were more for decoration than anything else, but they do add an element of realism...

I glued them in place...

Once that set up, I added some steps to one side of the tower.

Stay tuned for Part Two!!