The Place

The place for all your warhammer, 40k, LOTR and warmachine scenery. Scenic bases, custom paint jobs, how to's and much much more.



Sunday 12 February 2012

Stone Ruins Tutorial. Part 2

Ok so here are the final few stages involved in getting your 1st piece of terrain to a tabletop standard.

4. Give your foam a nice coat of watered down filler/spackle/plaster applied with a big paintbrush. The best way that I can describe the consistency would be too thick for paint and too wet for plaster. DO NOT try and get it smooth, the lines left behind by the paintbrush will pick up your last stages of drybrushing later on and make you look like an awesome painter to the uninitiated.


5. Now it's time to bulk out the base, ruins are usually going to be reasonably ancient so the surrounding area is unlikely to be flat. If however you are attempting a larger piece with lots of base area on which you wish to place miniatures then you may want to skip this step. I use a backing coat plaster called Bonding purely because it's quite lightweight and my terrain gets posted, but you can use the same medium as you used in the last step as long as you make it stiff enough to hold it's own shape.
6. Once dry, cover as much ground area as you like with pva glue and pour over some mixed grade sand(such as sharp sand) and allow to dry.
7. Time to undercoat, I chose a dark grey for this piece but you can use what ever colour you like. Try and use a darker shade though as this makes drybrushing far more effective.
8. Using a couple of consecutively lighter shades, give your terrain a good ol' fashioned drybrushing. The final brush can be a very dry white if you trust your hand-brush co-ordination.
9. Once your're happy with the paintjob, it's time to add a little static grass or flock. I've learned the hard way that less is generally better than more so dab on a few patches of pva and cover in the grass of your choice.
and there you have it, hopefully your ruins will look something like this or even better. This was the 1st type of terrain that I made and with each piece I just attempted something slightly different, here are a few I painted up with this one. I hope you liked my 1st ever tutorial and good luck with your modelling.
Any questions or comments, you know what to do.

4 piece Desert Terrain set.

Well these were a joy to make, made from the usual line up of construction foam and plaster. Painted to look like an arid desert landscape. Currently on My ebay page for £24 starting bid, if you would like me to make anything similar then drop me an email on Hawkmanmodels@hotmail.com.

Saturday 11 February 2012

Stone Ruins Tutorial. Part 1

As promised here is the 1st installment of my tutorial for some ancient stone ruins.


1. Using the tools pictured below in my state of the art spray booth, I turned a small piece of hardboard into an oval shaped base, it is important at this stage to make sure that your edges are nice and bevelled(sloped).
I have given the top a light sanding to allow plaster to stick a bit better in the later stages.


2. Using a piece of insulation foam (check any skips that you come across for this fantastic alternative to craft foam), roughly sketch out a random block pattern. Carefully cut out your lines and follow them around the edges and round the back.

3. Now you need to add some weathering and some battle damage to make it look suitably ancient. To do this just start widening your lines in random places and cutting out irregular chunks here there and everywhere.
Hopefully you should now be looking at something like this. Note that I have now attached the ruins to the base, with a big blob of No Nails type glue. PVA would probably suffice but I prefer No Nails as it provides a stronger bond.

This is as far as I've got tonight, part 2 will hopefully be up tomorrow.

What would you like to see?

If there was a piece of terrain that you reallty wanted to see built, or even a set for that matter then what would you want? Imperial Palace? Hive World Gladiatorial Arena? Sacrificial Chaos Altar? The Fang? Or how about some Space Marine Barracks, complete with Training area and place of worship? Let me know what tickles your fancy and maybe I'll build it.
Happy gaming.

Friday 10 February 2012

Desert Terrain for Warhammer or 40k

I knocked these up this week as I was getting a bit bored with grey rock formations and ruined buildings, the strata effect is done with a long disposable blade(the snap off kind) cutting parallel to the table top followed by some thinned down plaster applied with horizontal brushstrokes. Painted with nice earthy tones, burnt sienna, terracotta, buff titanium etc. As always, if you would like a step by step tutorial then drop a comment below.

Some more Scenic bases....At last.

Well it's been a while but I've been a busy little Bee, here are my new scenic bases in 25mm and 60mm. These are all currently on my ebay page, the link you can find on the right hand side of this page.
Alternatively you can email me directly on hawkmanmodels@hotmail.com for a slightly better price
Thanks for looking and don't forget to drop a comment below so that I know what you all think.

Friday 6 January 2012

Eldar scenic bases

Happy new year gamers and makers,
I've just finished  my new 100mm Eldar scenic base, I've still got to make the molds for the 60mm and 25mm bases but for now here's the big boy in all its glory. These can be bought via my ebay page for the bargain price of £4 + p and p or email me directly on Hawkmanmodels@hotmail.com for a slightly better deal.
Thanks for looking and keep an eye out for the others coming very soon.