Better late than never: Painting the display board

We still have more posts on the army board!  In fact, there might be two more. :-)

You can see that I have gotten to some mid level light greys.  I was sure to keep mixing in some warmer greys, as well as some green.

Also, it was time to start painting my buildings.  They were going to be the same color as the tiles on the main level, so I painted those at the same time.

I used some tan, mixing in that with the black for the darkest colors.  More of the tan crept in to each mixture.

This building shows how I tried to weather the structures by keeping my lightest colors towards the bottom of the structure.  Since these were ruined buildings, I wanted the top parts to be as stained and weathered as possible.

By "cheating" a bit and leaving the top darker meant that I did not have to go back and paint those stains in.  Ideally, I would have preferred to do that, but as you know, time was not on my side at all!

Same thing for the tiles.  The shortcut here would be using flock and grass in the crevices and grout lines.

Some of the tiles (notably the ones by the river) were left darker to simulate stains.

The island watchtower is just about complete...

More lightening of the bottom part of the large building.. I tried to use my brush strokes carefully, in order to get stain and streaks without actually painting them!  Note the lighter section just above the doorway right next to that dark greenish streak.

Here's a few more shots as I get closer to the next phase...

Hey, this thing needs some grass!  More to come tomorrow!

Off to war: No, that's not Cheeze Whiz

All right, we are just about to leave for the tournament.  First, a few images of the board from the other day. You can see the process of making waterfalls starts with water effects, spread out on the plastic sheet

You make the waterfall sheets with a brush, and let it dry.

The board ready for priming.

Priming the board with black latex paint!

Then it was time to put the magnetic primer on the horizontal surfaces to hold the minis better..

Painting the board!  Lots of acrylic paint...

Big brushes, and key colors spread out on pallettes...

Mixing grey and green into the black to lighten all the rocks gradually.

Some areas get a yellow ochre to make them more greenish

The river bed gets even more green...

Same for the waterfall area

More to come!

Construction of the display board continues: rocks, tiles, and buildings

When I last left you, I was gluing rocks and gravel into river beds, and filling in gaps between foam layers.  That process continued for a while..

Once that was finished, I needed to put some simple square tiles down where the Khandish chariots would be positioned.  They also had this texture on their bases.  The idea was to keep the chariots on the outer edge of the board, demonstrating the reason why the elves had retreated to this redoubt.

I did the corner on the right first to get the technique down.  These squares are a little bit bigger than those on the bases, but it gets the point across :-)  You can see that I started to lay down some broken flooring on the left side as well.

Then it was time to create some buildings.  My original plans were for something way more elaborate, but time said otherwise.  Since ruined buildings take way less time to make, I put together some damaged buildings using foam kindly donated by Rich.

That foam was surprisingly easy to work with.  It could be cut easily, weathered and textured.  I could take a simple scoring tool to make cracks and tiles, etc., in no time at all!

Instead of an entire set of fortifications on the upper level, I had to find something else quick.  so, I made a slightly larger ruined building to carry the theme of the watchtower on the island.

The view from the upper building...

These next few images show the floor laid out in every section.  I used matboard scraps for this.

So, by this stage, it was ready to paint after all the excess rocks and gravel were dusted off the next morning!

Stay tuned for images of the painting process!!

Please note... I may not have the time to make posts of the tournament itself until after it is completely over.  I will finish off the posts of the army board and the painting of the minis.

Rollin' down the river...Constructing the Fortress Falls display board

We we last left you, I was starting to build up the island in the center of the board.  I was also using my scraps and shavings to create those shale outcroppings.

As you can see here, those same pieces work just as well to make sections of rock that are in the process of eroding away from the face of the island cliff.  Some of the more triangle shaped scraps worked well to make the largest boulders in the water, where the masonite is visible.  You want to do those in a more realistic pattern.  That is, lager rocks nearest the source (the cliff face), gradually getting smaller

Once you have that ready to go, it's time to grab the 'real' rocks and get those glued onto the board!  I have three different sizes, from construction gravel (yes, that's true!) to various ballast sizes.

You can see the fallen boulders piled up where the waterfalls will hit...

As for gluing the rocks, you put down your wood glue, and then place the largest rocks.

The next grade of ballast is applied...

Then the fine grade, or even sand.

For some of the lager gaps, I used my Oxide paste.  I love that stuff!

It acts like glue, except that like flex paste, it holds it's shape, and it even has a sandy texture built in!

This is a great example of how those various techniques can make an awkard looking joint seem quite real!

The same principle is used on the river beds, but I use less of the mid grade ballast.  It is mostly very big rocks, with sand or fine ballast

Here are more examples of the use of oxide paste.  Since it holds its shape, it does not simply run down the surface.  If it is thick enough, you can hide those seams between layers so perfectly!

The process continues all across the board.  I did the lower levels first, As it can be very tough to apply glue to an area that has all sorts of loose gravel and sand sitting in it.  More to come!  Stay tuned...