Peterdita Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 (edited) I never did any WIP pictures, but I thought I'd do my first write up if anyone is interested. Not as much a tutorial, more what I did and would have liked to do better or different next time. Maybe I can spare you some effort somewhere in here. And if you actually make it through reading this and remember a better/easier/different way to do something, PLEASE share, I'd love to know! (sorry for the length, It was a lot of work though :bird:) Iron Painter 6 round 1 Time: just over 2 weeks Theme: The Color Purple Got going right out the gate on this one (I have no life) First weekend I had general idea of what I wanted to do: Sick sewer with purple graffiti and sludge and those pretty new Wyrd spider minis I just got. I remember seeing Greenstuff's awesome piece and always wanted to do something like that. Right up my back alley. Tons of opportunity to use purple and my mini collection is limited, so theme done and construction begins. I just bought two new lamps for my office/work room. (I can see in here now! 150w and 90w) The boxes were still laying with styrofoam in them, so nabbed it and started cutting away. PLEASE RECYCLE!:secruity: Sewer pipes are Hirst Arts #320. Cast for me nicely by James over at Skullcrafts. A+ Service. I knew the base was going to take the longest so I concentraded on that. I've never really skulpted anything or used water effects so I wanted to leave myself tons of time for unexpected hiccups. I primed the minis black (ghetto $2 primer/love it!) and pinned them to some janky old wood plyths I had laying around. This came in real handy later as I painted the borg in all its funky parts and angles. It was super cold here but I had to do prime it anyway, prob not the best idea for sprays. The plaster pipes sucked that stuff up! The Borg arms go on smooth but did require some small green stuff in the cracks. I attached his legs post paint at the end of the project. I broke two of the arachnid's lower legs and lost them in the carpet while filing them (blame the beer) but just quickly skulpted poor new ones. (you can see one in front of the WYRD logo later) I liked having him pinned like this, I could spin him around withought changing my angle or resting position, and will prob do this more in the future. I used a red Crayola marker to outline the simple base cut and it was the worst move ever! It kept seeping through every step of the project and really pissed me off, I couldn't believe it. It was seeping to the top of the water effects 3-4 layers of materials later. So cut it out, don't get it on your hands, don't use them, whatever, worst error of the project I'd say. WALLS: I glued it all down, forced the big pipe through the back in spinning motion and got a nice fitting hole. (huhuh) Then I textured the whole thing with watered down wall spackle. Dixie cup and little bit of water pretty easy. Painted it on with a big brush. After that dried, I sanded it down with big grit paper. Then I went back and did a second thinner layer in spots that needed more and over the whole thing. Somewhere around here I got one of those small finger cuts that you cant put a bandaid on but wont stop bleeding. So theres dried blood on some spots under there. (Built with iron!) Sanded it a final time with fine grit. and good to go. SLUDGE: I used Procreate (expensive but I had my first kit of it so I tried it). Mixed it up and started spreading it around the basin part. It was more firm than I expected and started crunching styrofoam as I spread it around. Next time I would roll it out on a table, cut it trim with a pattern and then put it on the piece. It was tough to even it out and the finger prints where bad, but I figured that would get coverd up later (I say that a lot). Rolled out long snakes and had them coming out the big pipe and into the base. To do the ripples I just rolled out tiny snakes of skulpty and layed them down around the 'pour' and rolled a golf tee around them to fade them into the base with a pointed top ^ Kinda sloppy but it came out ok in the end. PAINTED WALLS: I painted the whole thing black (cheap craft paint/love it!) I dry brushed the walls with gradually lighted grays (3-4 shades). If I had more time I would have thrown in some cracks, washes and pigments, but no such luxury. PAINTED PIPES: Primed black, spray painted white (cheap HD design Flat white) I tried to do it at an agle that would imply a lighting source on it as well (spray for the top down) This would make the insides of my big pipe "to clean" and draw some attention later. Again more washes with time. On top of the white paint I slopped Kiwi Brown shoe polish. Quickly wiping it back off as soon as possible per Hirst Arts reccomendations. Pretty easy and fast with decent results. I later did a crevice wash with GW bablab black. (or whatever its called) I would have liked to do cracks and stains on them but must keep going. I had to cut a small circle in the basin skulpty so the little pipe group would fit in the scene like I had dry fitted it earlier. Glue in the pipes and move on. PAINTING SLUDGE: So by now I have these skulpty worns coming out of the big pipe and they didn't get ^ topped off because it wasn't easy to get in there and by the time I tried it was to hard. I should have squeezed them to a point before hand. So I filled in the gaps of volume in between them with some watered down black paint and Elmers Glue. I slopped this stuff in there. It filled in the gaps well and I did this a couple of times over a few nights. I also lightly painted this stuff over the sculpty in the basin to cover up the finger prints and dead spots. For as sloppy and easy this was, I think this part REALLY helped. It hid a lot of scultping errors and thickened the body of the flow nicely. Once dry. I painted it black again. Painted the high parts with Valejo 720 (royal purple I think) Added white to this and highlighted ripples @ 3 times. Then I did a layer of GW water effects. I think I slopped this stuff on to thick, or the Big pipe isn't exactly level so inside the pipe, the resin cracked and broke appart real bad. The basin was fine and worked out pretty well. Over the next couple nights I was on damage control. Just adding more water effects to the cracks trying to fill in the negatives spaces that looked like a desert. Add some cat hair and leaking red Crayola marker used a week ago for 10 seconds that wont go away, and there I was. I would have liked to play with small amounts of paint in the layers but after the initial dissaster I just played it safe. Over these slow 'layer water and leave alone' days, I'm making simple mushrooms and painting rats and spiders. WYRD TAG: I just trimmed down the logo from a blister and outlined the wall with pencil. Then drew in the lettering. Painted sloppy outside the lines GWF HormGaughnt Purple. Added some white, washed thin to the bottom to lighten it, and washed AV720 up top. Then I went back and outlined in black. I was pretty pleased with how it came out. Sometimes you get lucky and it works like you picture it. The black outline got outta control as I tried to tie it in with the webs. Not to mention, I started the webs convex instead of concave like I had wanted to do but had to keep going. _)_)_)_) forgot to do _(_(_(_ pattern. Oh well, ironmaning some long nights and beer only sometimes helps. PAINTING SPIDERS AND BORG: I ended up painting the bog's purples bits twice. Freehand and all... Originally it was GW Liche purple and it didn't match the other colors at all. Separate mini and base painting caught me ugly. So I redid all that with GWF Homagaunt purple, washed on the edges with That Vellejo 720 multiple times, and I got a pretty nice fade that I felt pretty happy with. Hit it all up with webs AGAIN. I will try drafting pens next time (thanks CommanderY) to keep the lines cleaner. Yes, I only used two purples and white on all this. Sad to admit. My color pallete isn't really that keen so I made it all match. I could have tried harder and screwed it up more. I would have liked to do some green rot/oxidation on the pipes to get more color in here but no time. Borgs/spiders metals you cant really see but is just drybrushed GW boltgun, spot washed GWW Devlan mud/bab black a few times, and then re-highlighted one or twice. First time I ever painted gems, and was pleased with those as well. Good Tutorial here and I looked at Ericj's studio picture, and did them up. The skin is kinda mess, but it worked out alright. "It looks better in person" lol. I just didn't have time to wash it as many times as I wanted and all that excuse again. I suck at skin anyway so who knows if I could have even done better with more time. FINISHING IT UP: If your still reading this, I'm almost done, hang in there I tried to glue the bugs around spaciously and give it that crittery feeling. At some point I stuck in the mushrooms and rats in the nest. Gluing the borgs legs on was a huge pain. I was shaky that night and getting it down on a different level with the pipes was tough. I didn't have any drilled holes in the top half of the borg so it was all super gel and frustrating breaks. Finally I got the legs on right, tiny bits of super gel on the front tips so I didn't get that white bleaching around the contact spots of the pipes, bigger globs in the back. Washed the spots with GWW devlan mud and pipes joints with GWW Bab black. Then I sat back and looked at the coolest thing I think I've ever made. I'd guess about: 50 hours, $50 and 50 beers in this bad boy. I'll have to buy these minis again because I wont be breaking this one down. Thanks to everyone in the contest for well the contest, and Greenstuff for the tips. I had a ton of Fun and it was definitely the most iron, awesome 2 week miniature binge I've ever been on. Thanks for reading. Any thoughts for me? Edited January 4, 2010 by Peterdita I used procreate and not sculpty as originally mentioned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moavoamoatu Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 It's a fantastic diorama. Awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBugKing Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Instead of drafting pens see if you can find some brush pens. Drafting pens often do not apply ink terribly well. The brush pens actually have a felt calligraphic brush that tapers to a very fine point. They don't clog and you can get much better control out of them. *edit And this kicks ass! Thanks for the fabrication and painting narrative as well as the link to Greenstuffs piece. I really liked this one an awful lot. Kudos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hinton Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Thanks for posting this up. I thought those pipes might from HA. There's some good info here (for me, anyway) that might be helpful in future projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v22TTC Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Awesome - thanks for sharing (will read it again when there isn't an alarm going off constantly behind me and I can do it justice). I'm envious of that 50+ hours thing: my pieces generally take twice as long and look half as good.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St. Anger Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Really useful write-up on your diorama!!! I will probably note this for future reference. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LavronYor Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 wow, this is great. thanks much for sharing all the hard work. Lavron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wren Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Excellent write-up, very interesting to me as I am scenery construction challenged. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBugKing Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 It's really too bad that scenery takes so long to build. You aren't the only person to mention that you have difficulty with doing scenic treatments Wren. I think that maybe next year I'll do a class on scenic projects at Gencon. I'll see if I can drag some of the other Terrainthralls into it too. Moa! A chance and reason (in addition to all the others!) to make it across the pond! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redstripe Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Outstanding, really stellar work. This is a beautiful piece, you should be really proud. You were brave to attempt a bunch of techniques for the first time. I think it all turned out amazing in the end. Well done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewartoad Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Fantastic job! What a great diorama, the hard work really paid off! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keltheos Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Wow, that looks amazing. First time trying some of those techniques? Even better!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jabberwocky Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Great stuff--thank you so much for the tutorial! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeafNala Posted February 12, 2009 Report Share Posted February 12, 2009 COOL POST; the write up is ACTUALLY a GOOD read AND the photos ARE terrific. The minis turned out SO nicely, but the whole piece definitely is greater than the sum of the parts. VERY WELL DONE, Amigo!:fing02: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chameleon Posted February 21, 2009 Report Share Posted February 21, 2009 Well done for the first round! The explanation of how you did the scenery is very understandable and it's great to know how you did it. Thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graysen Posted January 4, 2010 Report Share Posted January 4, 2010 Are the pics broken for anyone else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peterdita Posted January 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2010 (edited) Sorry buddy, they were all hosted on the old wyrd server. I'll see if I can update it for ya. Should be fixed. Crazy to think this was just about exactly one year ago... Nice to see some of mini skills have improved and sad that some are still just as bad Thanks for looking. Edited January 4, 2010 by Peterdita Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wombats Posted January 5, 2010 Report Share Posted January 5, 2010 Thats a piece of work to be proud of, thanks for keeping the pic up. Its a real inspiration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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