TABLETOP GAMING - "Making DESERT DUNES & River" Pt.4

The DESERT DUNES are DONE! I finished up the final paint job this weekend.

I was going to show the painting process as I worked on these, but there were too many glazes used to build up the layers of color. In short, I used a burnt red acrylic undercoating for the rocks, then used a very watered down chocolate brown glaze over the whole thing. I dry-brushed a honey brown over all of the sand and rocks, to pick up some highlights. Then I dry-brushed some light orange over that. Finally, I hit the sand with some very light tan, which accentuated the darker under-painting. I was surprised that a bit more of the original texture that was sculpted with the fork into the "icing mud" was visible through the glued-on sand (see last post).

Here are the four basic pieces...

...and some variations on how they can be arranged for game-play.

Next time, I'll finish up this project and show you the process I used to make the RIVER.

TABLETOP GAMING - "Making DESERT DUNES & River" Pt.3

Primed and ready for the final paint job! I'm giving you a sneak peak of the river segments...I'll be showing the step-by-steps later. For this post...here's the next stages of making the DUNES.

I had some left-over dry-wall mud from redoing a bathroom project...so I mixed in a little brown acrylic paint. Viola...icing for the styrofoam!

My desire was to emulate the wavy texture of wind-blown sand. So I just spread on the "mud" and dragged a plastic fork through it to get the effect I was trying for.

Once the mud was dry, I sanded down the surfaces to soften it a bit...wanted the "sand-blasted" look on the boulders.

After that, I coated everything with watered down Elmer's wood glue, to give it a harder shell.

Once that had dried, I painted full-strength glue onto the areas where I wanted to add sand, for more texture. Sadly, I basically wasted all of the time I had put into making the wavy lines in the sand areas. The "real" sand pretty much filled all of that in. Oh well...I'm making this stuff up as I go...sometimes it doesn't quite work the way I had thought it might.

Once the glued-on sand had dried, I painted on one more coating of a primer tan.

Now I'm ready to do the fun part, and paint these guys to look like rusty-red boulders on sand-dunes!

This is my last post for 2010. I hope you have a Happy New Year! See ya back here in 2011!

UPDATE!
Decided to make one more Dune this morning...a larger piece with a gentle slope. I skipped the "icing" phase of preparing the surface and just gave this one a coating of gesso. Next I painted on the glue and covered it with sand. Now it's primed and ready for the final paint job.

TABLETOP GAMING - "Making DESERT DUNES & River" Pt.2

As usual, I like to lead off with a photo of where the next stage ends up...here are the basic shapes of my DESERT DUNE pieces. Now let's work backwards to see how I got there.

In my last post I had different pieces of insulation foam on the hex-shaped boards. I realized after I had already cut them out, that I did now allow for the transition of the sloped sides from the base. They would have ended up too small, when sculpted. So I cut all new pieces of foam that matched the maximum edges of my hex-boards. Live and learn...

I used various tools to begin shaping the "sand/rocks"...a saw from my miter box, a piece of sanding paper from an old belt sander, and a file that looks like a cheese shredder. I don't own a hot wire "foam cutter" tool, though I have tried to make one in the past with a soldering iron. When melting through the foam, they tend to give off very strong fumes that aren't good for your brain...you have to use them in a well ventilated area. So...just doing this "old school".

Once I had the basic shapes the way I wanted them, I used "Super 77" spray mount...I coated the bottom of the foam, then the board. Once they were a little bit dry, I pressed the foam onto the board. You'll notice I've also spray-glued a big boulder on the top of the dune.

Here are all three segments of the dunes...the hex-base format lends itself to various configurations.
Next, I gave everything a coating of gesso, to seal up the surfaces, and give a uniform base coat to the shapes. I will begin to further refine the shapes to add details, and create more "sandy" textures and transitions on the forms.