30 July 2022

Season of Scenery: Ruined Temple 2

Dewi stalks his domain, his rage building, his anger shaking the temple to its very foundations as he desperately searches for his contact lens.

This morning I made an early start on the temple, helped by the fact that I woke up at 4.30. No, I don't know why either.

Before priming the model I went on another hunt for the missing sand. It was still missing, but I did find a container of small stones and grit so yay, I guess. I daubed Mod Podge around the edges of the temple, the blocks and fallen column and sprinkled grit over it to add some more texture. It was spattered with more spray glue and put outside in the sun to dry.

Alicia later found the sand on a shelf in the spare room. A shelf I'd checked twice. It's definitely that bloody gremlin, and he's also probably responsible for all the Etsy and Reaper minis that keep showing up in the mail.

I thought about taking the base downstairs to spray prime it, but then thought I may as well just slap on a coat of black craft paint as it would be faster. And it would mean not having to worry about melting foam. Using a large flat brush, it was primed in no time.

I'm going to use the same technique of undertoning on the temple that I used on my ruined chapel. Basically, instead of just drybrushing with greys I first painted the whole temple with Chestnut craft paint to give it a warmer tone. God I hope this works, it's not like I can chuck it in a bowl of Simple Green.

The next stage is to paint random bits of the temple with a couple of colours that match the tone of the basecoat, so I went for Yellow Ochre and Orange Brown. I first made a 50/50 mix to do the midtones, then I used the yellow, then the orange.

It's the world's worst chessboard! Looking at this I was really hoping I hadn't just taken a gigantic dump on my awesome temple. 

Well well well, guess who forgot to take photos of at least two stages? Anyway, we've reached drybrushing time. You can't tell, but the whole temple was heavily drybrushed with Khaki craft paint, then a mix of Khaki and Antique Parchment craft paints. A final lighter once-over with pure Antique Parchment finished it off, but in the process I obliterated the underlying warmer colours and basically wasted my time doing them. Obviously I overdid the first stage of drybrushing, but on the other hand I'm pretty happy with this look.

Here's Dewi lording it over the kitchen again. He's doing a very good job of guarding the Keurig machine and the cupboard full of dog treats, bless him. One thing I do like about this very light tone is that it's a really good contrast with his red skin.

It's time to tone things down a bit. I poured some of my homemade black wash into a pot and thinned it with water, then liberally plastered it all over the temple, columns and rubble. After it dried I did it again, this time to dirty the stonework as well as increase the shading.

While the wash dried I gave the ground-level base a couple of coats of English Ivy craft paint in readiness for it to be thoroughly flocked.

So that's where the temple stands at the mo. I'm hoping to get more done tomorrow, basically giving the stonework another drybrush to lighten it a tad and making a start on the surrounding base with PVA, tufts, flock, and swearing. Till next time, amigos!

17 comments:

  1. Fantastic colour choices Matt, they really frame the Dragon well, and the whole piece is progressing well.
    Sounds like you may need to get a safe to stop that pesky Gremlin from buying all those models ! LOL

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    1. Thanks, Dave, and believe me I'll be blaming the gremlin when all those figures arrive LOL!

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  2. Love it! That's really taking shape now.

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    1. Cheers, Michael! It's coming together and despite the colour being way lighter than I'd planned for it's looking really good.

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  3. John@justneedsvarnishSunday, July 31, 2022

    Well I liked the chessboard colours, but after the drybrushing and toning down I like it more! Looks like a ruined temple, the sort of thing a dragon would demolish looking for his bag of sand and not being able to find it! Nice work Matt! :-)

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    1. Thanks, John! That chessboard look really worried me as frankly it was awful, but a lot of drybrushing (and a ruined brush) helped to make the temple a lot better.

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  4. It's looking terrific so far! Sweet work indeed, can't wait to see it finished :)

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    1. Thanks, Suber, I just hope the base comes out as good as the temple :-)

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  5. I think I preferrred the final outcome rather than the 'chessboard', which imho didn't look 'right'.
    The final model obviously, now, a ruined temple i some desert or other.

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    1. I was panicking at the chessboard look, Joe, but happily the drybrushing covered it nicely!

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  6. Well that is a total triumph mate! From a sci/fi landing pad to a fantasy one! 😉 Both are really excellent, love the way the stonework came out.

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Cheers, Roger, I appreciate that! It really is looking better than I thought it would and I'm looking forward to getting the base done.

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  7. Wow, pulled it off at the very end! Still looking great and interested to see how the flocking turns out. I know the feeling of losing stuff, I have my hobby stuff scattered in about 5 different places in the house. One week I kept looking for something I misplaced and KNEW I had put somewhere. Took me forever to find the damned thing! And now I can't even remember what it was! ;)

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    1. Speaking of not remembering, that was my comment!

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    2. I kind of guessed it was you! Thanks, and I'm looking forward to the flocking and basing part of it, hopefully it'll get the overgrown abandoned look I'm going for. As for losing stuff, I do it all the time and spend ages hunting through the mess that is my desk looking for bits!

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  8. This is looking really nice, Matt! The base is truly worthy of Dewi now and I'm excited to see how this looks after your finishing touches!

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    1. Thanks, Jeff, it's getting finished and later today I'll be going through the usual torture of photographing it LOL!

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