{"id":5066,"date":"2021-12-25T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-25T10:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/?p=5066"},"modified":"2021-12-23T15:14:24","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T15:14:24","slug":"the-temple-of-the-wilds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/2021\/12\/25\/the-temple-of-the-wilds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Temple Of The (Festive) Wilds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Merry Christmas to all our members and readers.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Master builder Stephen takes us through the construction of his latest masterpiece.<\/em><\/p>\n

I recently ordered a few bits from Scotia Grendel and one of the things I ordered was some standing stones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was a nice quick delivery.<\/p>\n

I have a soft spot for these old resin scenics \u2013 reminds me of back in the early 90s when I started getting into gaming and our local shop stocked them.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n

What I liked about these pieces were the Saxon style carvings. You see, I like my fantasy couched a bit in history. Problem was that the Saxon carvings only appeared on one side of the top pieces. On the other side was a more literal, typical fantasy, depiction of a dragon.<\/p>\n

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The dragon designs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0And on one side of each of the uprights was an equally typical fantasy style arrow thingy.<\/p>\n

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The uprights<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I didn’t like that.<\/p>\n

So what I decided to do was make a mould of the Saxon style dragon, cast it, and use it to replace the dragon I didn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

I used some Oyumaru modelling compound<\/a> (Ed: other suppliers are available<\/em>) to make a mould of the Saxon dragon. I then used some of Wilko’s own-brand epoxy resin with a tiny blob of brown paint to cast it.<\/p>\n

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Casting the new panels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once this had set I sanded the reverse side down and also sanded down the fantasy dragon on the actual resin piece. I then glued it in place and used some Miliput to blend it in.<\/p>\n

With the arrows on the uprights I simply sanded them down and then skinned the surface with Miliput and stippled it to look like the stone effect.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The updated stones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I then turned my head to the base. I wanted it mounted on a rocky outcrop to make it look more dramatic. To keep it light I was going to use expanded polystyrene. However, that\u2019s not the strongest material. So I made a sandwich of it, with a wooden base and a wooden top to which I could glue the resin so it would be more firmly attached to the wood rather than expanded polystyrene.<\/p>\n

I used PVA glue to fix it all together and then put a couple of heavy books on it to keep it flat whilst the glue set. I left it a good 24 hours, because the glue takes longer to set on polystyrene.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The polystyrene sandwich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When that had set it was time to glue the standing stones to it. A good dollop of superglue and the basic model was done. I then broke away the surplus expanded polystyrene in the shape of how I wanted the outcrop.<\/p>\n

\"\"
All the bits glued into place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To make the model stronger and more resilient to knocks I decided I would skin the model in Miliput. I used the Standard grade, because that\u2019s what I had to hand.<\/p>\n

To create a stone-effect I used\u2026a stone! Yup, went out into the garden, found a small stone with a suitable texture and after the Miliput had been smeared all over I pressed and smudged the stone into the putty.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Layer of Miliput added<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The altar stone with sacrificial goat was a piece from\u2026well, I honestly can\u2019t remember. It\u2019s been sitting in the bits bag for a long time waiting for a use. And now its time had come. I also thought about adding a couple of poles with skulls on them. Had a few ideas about that, but it wasn\u2019t the time to add that just yet, so I could keep mulling on it.<\/p>\n

Right then, the painting.<\/p>\n

Look, stone is rarely grey. That\u2019s not to say there\u2019s no grey stones, but stones have a lot more to them than just grey. Stone painted grey with a black undercoat just looks too stark and is not what stone looks like. It\u2019s as wrong as painting tree trunks brown \u2013 have a look at them, they are not the colour of chocolate!<\/p>\n

My usual approach with painting stone is to start with a dark brown undercoat. This was no different. I used Humbrol Model Spray dark brown. There then followed a series of dry-brushings using browns and, yes, some grey as well!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dark brown undercoat<\/p>\n

\"\"
Heavy drybrush with khaki<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Lighter drybrush with khaki and grey mix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Lighter still with a bit of white added to the mix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Another light drybrush with even more white added<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Last very light dry brush with an off-white<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the painting done all that was left were the final touches. I revisited my skull-on-stick idea, but I toned it down. Instead of several I decided to keep it simple with just the one \u2013 made from a cocktail stick and skull from GW\u2019s Box Of Skulls.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Weathering and shading done, and skull added.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I used static grass in patches around the base. I kept it sparse on top of the rock because there wouldn\u2019t be so much earth for the grass to grow in. I then added some clump foliage to represent weeds and things, paying attention to add it to nooks and crannies and also the area that may not be trodden on so much.<\/p>\n

With that done, the Temple Of The Wilds is complete.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The final model with static grass and clump foliage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
The finished article, without festive adornments.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merry Christmas to all our members and readers.\u00a0 Master builder Stephen takes us through the construction of his latest masterpiece. I recently ordered a few bits from Scotia Grendel and one of the things I ordered was some standing stones.   It was a nice quick delivery. I have a soft spot for these old … Continue reading “The Temple Of The (Festive) Wilds”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,44,11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-28mm-wargaming","category-dark-ages","category-fantasy","category-modelling-and-painting-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/The-Temple-Of-The-Festive-Wilds.jpg?fit=771%2C441&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9A5LG-1jI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5066"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5219,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5066\/revisions\/5219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brigademodels.co.uk\/mws\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}