Spodding

Firstly, welcome to our latest follower Gerard Boom (Geboom), it’s a privilege to have you here Gerard!
If you are at all interested in terrain making and want to see some high quality work, go and visit his website ‘Shifting Lands’ !

I was inspired to try a technique that Geboom has mastered with his Amsterdam Canal facades – plaster carving. I’ve not tried this since I was 15 years old, so I thought I’d start small. I wanted to make a master model for the pillars on my son’s Moria table, so that seemed like a good place to begin. I cast up a block of dental plaster roughly the right size, and then smoothed it off with sandpaper. Then in pencil I marked out the basic design. You have to accommodate any raised details in the block of plaster, so I had to carve out the main column shape leaving the base untouched. I’m still working on it at the moment, but you can see from these photos that it’s coming along. I think with a bit more practice and some more appropriate tools I should be able to get quite a lot of detail into a model. I plan on using this technique for a number of master models I hope to make for commercial sale in the future.

A while ago I promised my youngest son that I would make him a gaming table for use with his Lord of the Rings figures. So, now that Jurassic Reich is packed away and the shed is cleaned up again, it was time to fulfil my promise and start work on this little project. Sam has a number of Dwarves and is hoping to get the Mines of Moria set soon, so we decided on doing a 2′ x 3′ Khazad Dum board – large enough to play a decent game on, but small enough that he can fit it under his bed. And then, if it’s modular enough, we can always add more parts to it at a later date.

So, we both hopped in the car and trundled off to the timber merchant to get the base board, then it was straight out to the shed to start cutting foam. I had already done a simple design (which Sam approved, with the caveat that he gets to decide where the rubble piles go), so we had a basic idea of what was needed.

We cut the foam for the outer gallery to size and then tested it for fit against some stairs I had made a while ago. These seem to be the ideal size, so they were quickly seconded into this project. Once everything was cut out, we started gluing it down. That concluded the first construction session. I’ll make some pillars and steps next and then make moulds to enable us to cast them repeatedly.

A friend of mine (DurinsBane) and I are having a friendly competition to see who could build the best model of Bag End. It started off as a bit of meaningless rivalry between two friends and a good pace was set with regular updates on the One Ring website (click here). Unfortunately, the updates have become fewer and fewer until we’ve effectively stopped. I have become embroiled in a number of other projects (as I usually do) and DurinsBane’s model suffered an unfortunate accident at the hands (or more accurately – feet) of his girlfriend, so we’ve both done very little on this project for the past few months.

But to bring any new readers up to date with my model (go to the above link to see DurinsBane’s) here are several shots of the various components as it has grown over the past 12 months:

The tree above Bag End started its life as 64 strands of copper wire.
Once the branches were in the right shape, I started covering it with ProCreate and sculpting in the details.

The foliage is by MiniNatur – very life-like, but a little pricey.
The well was very quick to make too.

The first panel I made was the front door. I have since thrown that window out and plan on doing a better version.
The second panel is the parlour window.

The kitchen window was a joy to make. Everything seemed to work exactly as I wanted to. I wish I’d painted all of the panels at the same time though because now I am having extreme difficulty matching the colours of the stonework on every other panel.

It’s interesting to look on these images all in one spot and see the progression from the front door to the back door. I think the competition with Durinsbane has pushed me to higher standards than I’ve ever achieved before.

I am certainly very pleased with what I have achieved so far with this, and looking over the whole collection of panels I feel the urge to continue on with it even if DurinsBane has given up. I have one more panel to finish modelling and then I can finish off painting them all. Then it’s time for assembling them into a suitable landscape.