Sunday 11 November 2012

Dark Ages scenery - Stone Circle

I've been knocking together a few bits of scenery for our Age of Arthur campaign day on the 25th. Most of what I've been working on are woods, which are waiting for a few bits to turn up to finish them off, but while I was waiting I knocked together a stone circle.

My first attempt used polystyrene for the stones, but like an idiot I forgot what happens if you use spray paints on polystyrene... Result, some very melted stones. So, take two involved a quick hunt through the gravel out the back for some suitable looking stones.

It looks even better with the
arty lighting!
The base is 40 thou plastic card, spray painted with Humbrol matt dark brown. The stones are sprayed black, then drybrushed with first Army Painter Uniform Grey and then GW Astronomican Grey (hey, gotta use it up somehow), then fixed to the base with a hot glue gun. (Well, all except for one which steadfastly refused to hold, and got some superglue and a bit of BluTak instead!)

From then on, it's down to applying scatter and static grass. The base is a mix of Javis spring and summer grases, which between them are a decent match to my 6'x'4' battlemat from Citadel. The earth is Javis dark earth scatter with a couple of patches of my trusty Javis moorland scatter, and then there's some bits of Javis clump foliage and Woodland Scenics dark green undergrowth, a couple of spots of GF9 arid grass[1], and some Army Painter meadow flower and jungle tufts. And in a few places I added a second thicker layer of the basic static grass. The main aim was to produce something which didn't look like a cricket pitch or college lawn[2], but a bit more like a patch of neglected ground.

[1] That's the last time I'm buying GF9 grass - for some reason mine goes lumpy, and doesn't scatter at all well. Not nice, and I'll be replacing it with some Woodland Scenics stuff instead (since Javis sadly don't make it in parched/corn shades).

[2] My office in my first job used to overlook Downing College, Cambridge's main lawn. The story goes that a tourist once asked a porter how they got their lawns looking so good. The reply was, I gather, "Cut, roll it, weed it and feed it, sir. For three hundred years."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Views and opinions expressed here are those of the commenter, not mine. I reserve the right to delete comments if I consider them unacceptable. Unfortunately due to persistent spam from one source, I've been forced to turn on captchas for comments.

Comments on posts older than 7 days will go into a moderation queue.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...