Good afternoon all, another sunny day on the shores of the Mighty Mersey.
With the buildings largely done I turned my attention to some urban walls - yes, yes, I know I'm doing walls in the Middle Earth build as well - it's wall week or something like that.
Because these are very simple, just a double thickness of styrene will be sufficient. They are not being scribed - just textured.
I used a ruler and cut some strips slightly taller than head height on a figure - the walls are designed - like the buildings - to mark the edge of the playing area rather than be a part of the game. They were glued together using UHU POR, and walked away from for a couple of days. I wanted some gateways to go between the buildings, so made some even taller walls and added buttresses which will get cap stones.
These are pretty basic items, but the nature of the material - its thickness, and the effect when you texture it, makes them a good return for the small amount of effort that goes into them.
Once they were glued, the walls were attacked with a scrunched up ball of silver foil, rolling it over the surface of the styrene. This created a rough plaster texture (or a stone texture or whatever). They have also had cap stones added from thin unevenly cut styrodur.
This second wall has had a horse trough built onto it, with a piece of u-channel Evergreen plastic pushed into the styrene to make a spout.
Simple paint job.
This one has also been glued onto a mounting card base for stability.
They also had the bottom edges where they met the cardboard bases filled. Then all the walls will be weathered when they're ready.
The two walls with gates came next. One had a gate made from coffee stirrers and a gateway cut-out.
The other had an archway added and the 'gate' was carved into the styrene.
These need card bases and painting.
It occurred to me that I haven't really show-cased the fountain. I showed it on some pictures but never really dedicated any images for it.
The fountain was quite simple, and a good example of how useful the sheets of styrene actually are. I cut a strip of styrene and bent it round a Pringles tube (I think, it might have been a tub of Mod Podge), holding it in place with masking tape.. Aftera couple of days allowing the styrene to take on the tubular shape. I came back to it and cut it so that the ends met around the form. Then I glued them into place on a disc of styrene, which was in turn glued onto a second disc to get the step effect.
I placed a third disc inside the ring, and glued everything tight.
I painted the inside a sort of watery, swirly green. Then covered that in gloss varnish.
I carved a column of styrodur (the blue stuff) added some details and some u-channels from Evergreen strip. The statue is an old Atlantic Greek, ripped from his idyllic life.
The water columns are strips of clear plastic put into place and coated with acryllic medium, the same was applied to the suface of the pool.
Quite pleased with this.
This has also been useful.
It is a set of templates for notebooks, but I can see many uses in the kind of work I am doing at the moment. It wasn't cheap - about £20, took forever to get here - having advertised it as for sale the makers then said "oh we need to make them first", and the piece I really wanted - the long slots, for doing brickwork - the plate is bent. But I think there is a lot of use in it, especially for marking out arches and angles etc, and for doing decoration,
Stay safe and thanks for looking in.