Ruins

All done now. Just a few days late unfortunately.

Some notes on this work:

• I wanted to keep some vibrancy in the colour, thus the orange. Lately I have been thinking about how to make models look good from a distance, and without the colour they can become green and grey blobs from 3-5 feet away.
• I also want to keep up the contrast (for same reason above), despite the multiple layers of weathering, so I kept reinforcing the dark areas and pushing the highlights.
• It’s fun going for something a little unexpected; in this case, the green tinged wood—which also adds to the feeling of decay.
• With the base coats, I generally start around midtone and shade down two colours, and highlight up 2-3 colours.
• Before painting, I am adding texture, with sand and kitty litter, and after painting with fine flock (one to create a ground cover look and the other for moss).
• I am not dry brushing much, because these are FDM printed and dry brushing just accentuates the print lines
• I am mainly using enamel washes for the weathering. I use AK products including two shades of slimy green moss, and then a dark streaking grime (but MIG are good too). The great thing about enamels is that you can work them for ages and then blend/streak/remove them with white spirit. Sometimes I will use oil paints for weathering but they take longer to dry and I was on a deadline with these (an online painting challenge over on the Plastic Crack Podcast).
• With the basing, it’s just a matter of going completely overboard. I generally use 2-4 layers of static grass, building on each successive layer (in this case it was only two). I will use heaps of different colour/texture/shaped tufts, and I go really light on flowers (in this case, none). I use a principle from gardening, which is to plant in drifts—well, I am not doing drifts—but I am clustering ‘plants’ of the same type together in groups (looks better that way). The shrubbery looking stuff is from Martin Welberg Scenic Studios.

Bases built and I scatchbuilt a set of outdoor stairs to the second story.