Thursday, 12 April 2012

Holdeness – A Lovely Place To Visit...


At the club recently we've been on a bit of a boat kick, specifically ‘splishy boats’ (aka Uncharted Seas from Spartan Games).

We’ve also been having a bit of a scenery purge as well...

The combination of these two factors has resulted in ‘Holdeness’ the island everyone wants to visit (or crash into at high speed...)

So here’s how a lump of wood was transformed into an island...


Stage 1 – Tweaking

Luckily the bit of wood we had lent itself perfectly to being an island or a rocky outcrop, however I wanted my island to have a population, luckily we had a Mighty Empires village and Castle laying about and these would do perfectly (before you point it out I know they are the wrong scale, but it looked good...)

The castle was too large to fit on the island so I cut it up into the individual towers.

So with a bit of greenstuff, patience and superglue Holdeness had a population.


Stage 2 – Undercoat

The key to a good paint job is a good undercoat; mine was done in three stages. The first was a good coat of black spray really making sure that the whole island was well covered.

The second stage of the undercoat was a heavily watered down coat of Lifecolour Dark Grey UA133 (heavily watered down was to me is a 1:7 ratio).

The third was a heavily watered down coat of Chaos Black (same ratio’s as the grey). The whole thing then had a blast under the hair dryer to fully dry it off.



Stage 3 – Drybrushing

Normally I consider dry brushing a crime against painting, however in this case it was the perfect tool for the job.

Heavy drybrush first of all with the dark grey from earlier, once complete a dash of Vallejo Stone Grey (or Fortress Grey is you’re using GW) was added to the mix and the island had another drybrush.

In total there were 4 layers of drybrushing, the final being pure Stone Grey.



Stage 4 – Detailing

So, I now had a large rock, a my island had a population it needed areas of earth. First part was a watered down coat of Vallejo Scorched Earth (GW Scorched Brown), once dry this was given a drybrush of Vallejo Earth.

While detailing the village and forts that had been added to the island were also picked out in Dark Gray and Stone Grey.



Stage 5 – Final Detailing

Next up a coat of PVA was applied to all the area where I wanted the island to have grass/trees/bushes. Scatter flock was then added and left to dry with the excess being gently brushed away.

Stage 6 – Waterline

It’s an island so I wanted to show the waves hitting the cliffs, this was easily done again with drybrushing, three layers. First layer Vallejo Stormy Blue, next Stormy Blue / Vallejo Magic Blue 50/50 mix and finally pure Magic Blue.

To make the waterline look right I did the drybrushing at an angle starting under the island and flicking upwards, this way it had the same effect as the waves hitting the rocks.

Done!

Not bad for a spur of the moment idea and a couple of hours work!


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