Tuesday, September 1, 2015

WIP - Araloth: Paint Hammer #paintchallenge - Starting on the Base

 
A few months ago I noticed a friendly competition happening on Twitter, it's called the Paint Hammer Painting Challenge and it's hosted by @paint_hammer. The premise if friendly competition with a single model, chosen by the previous winner.

It seems like a good time, and the deadline is usually a full month. Conversions and scenic bases are welcome too. So I figured, why not?


I knew I wanted him standing on a scenic base and I also wasn't going to do any conversions to him (Though I did cut off the rock his foot was on top of). I went through a bunch of planning drawings and nothing seemed to be good enough.

That's when I decided to just pop on a movie and play with cork. So, I took a spare wooden plaque I had laying around and just started stacking cork bits onto it. Eventually, I came up with this.










Once the cork was all super glued into place, it was time to cover it with clay. I use Crayola Air-Dry clay and it works pretty well. It does have a tendency to crack during the drying process, but it beats having to bake the entire piece. 



After the clay dries, I follow up the cracks with more clay and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and just cracks again. This time it did crack again, but after I had already used my spackling to rough up the texture. I'll need to try something else.


I do like using spackling for rocky pieces. It gives the clay a more realistic rocky appearance and is super easy to use. Also, it helps fill in cracks a bit. The picture above is from before it cracked again. This next time I'm going to try filling them with liquid green stuff to see what it does.