You still building this bloody thing!!!?

Ok, last post for the tabletop build. The rest of the build can be seen here in part 2 & part 1.

The next item I had to work on was the burnt out forest. This was achieved by procuring some gardening gone wrong old tree branches that were dried out. I just broke them off and drilled a hole up their guts so that I could pin them to the board. I then scattered a whole bunch of chinese tea leaves over the ground around them and sealed them in place with a few coats of watered down PVA. Once dry I black bombed the entire area and then selectively hit it with white highlights. It took age to find good images of burnt out forests. Coming from Australia I've seen my fair share of them up close, but terrain is not real life. In my search online for a burnt out forest I only came across one....on the entire internets I could only find ONE decent picture! Unreal huh? Anyway, it turned out great I think.

I also added some lichen shrubs around the board too. These were a necessary inclusion as there were quite a few wide open spaces that would have a) made the board a little boring, but more importantly they would have b) limited the strategic opportunities during play. Making mad dashes across no- mans-land (real or in imaginary games) almost always ends in death. I think the board looks a whole lot better for it anyway.

Once I received the doors in the mail I could set about finishing it off. These were from Brian Roes' "Trash Bash Bits" line and they worked a treat. I also had some miscasts that were generously donated to me by my mate Curtis from Ramshackle Games....a few jerry cans and doors. Once all these items were in place and seamlessly integrated into the board, ala more poo paper, I could begin painting the board up to its final stage.

I applied various washes and highlights to the ground area's and then spent an inordinate amount of time painting in all the details on the buildings and other terrain features. I felt like it made the board come alive. Kinda like when you paint a miniature, where the mini doesn't really look right until you've dotted the eyes. But in this case it had like a gazillion eyes!

After all the real work had been done to the board then came a bit of cosmetic work that would make a big difference to the overall appearance. And that was covering up the cardboard edging. I was wondering for quite a while how I was going to tackle this issue. Some of the ones that I briefly entertained were to just paint it black, or apply plastic sheets or kitchen laminate to it, or even line it with thin wood slats.....and a few others that I can't quite remember. But with all if these, bar paint, I would have ended up with sharp edges on the corners, something that I wanted to avoid. I ended up stumbling upon a better idea while out shopping with my wife. She was looking at material for knitting and making a tablecloth in a wholesale market. That's where I spied some heavy duty, almost denim like, fabric. I took a punt and bought a couple of metres of the stuff. It ticked all the boxes; cheap, black, durable, no sharp edges......and did I mention that it was cheap as well?

I made the pretend smoke coming out of the defence laser by first inserting a basic scaffold of plastic coat hangers into the building. I then hot glued fine steel wool onto it and gave it a similar treatment as I did to the burnt out forest. It looks a little too much like Don King IMO, but it'll do.

I made the "Papa's Place" sign as per Rob Hawkins great tutorial. Actually, if you look at his tutorial carefully and compare it against mine you can see that I cut a lot of corners. I used copper wire for mine and painted it all once I had it fully assembled. I'm pretty happy with how it came out all the same :)

One of the unexpected jobs that I created for myself when I built this thing was the storage issue. At first I was going to build a frame above the stairwell to store it, but then I realised that I'd almost definitely damage it at some stage whilst bringing it to & from to my sons' room. So I made a leaning shelf out of an old bookshelf from work. I then fixed that to the top of my sons bookshelf. Job's a good'n.

I've only taken a couple all encompassing shots of the table, as I think it'll probably be more interesting, and more fun, to see close up shots of the different elements of the table in action. All beit BS posed shots :p

My son approves :)

So, I can now call this project done. Onto the next board.......like fuck!!!

I'm glad I've now got a real board to play my pretend battles on. It's been a long time coming and I've learnt quite a few lessons along the way that will help inform how I construct the next board I make when I eventually move back home.

Cheers :)

Making my own Gryphonne Sepia

Hi,

I'll take a punt and guess that for most of us older painters out there we have a lot of different branded paints in our collection. And out of all of them there would be a sizable amount from Citadel? I'm just guessing obviously, but that's how it is for me.

Now, out of all of those paints that I've ever owned there's only ever been a couple that I treasure, can't do without, reach for on just about every occasion that I paint. One of them is Devlan Mud and the other was Gryphonne Sepia. The former was great at dirtying up minis, the latter was excellent at making silver look like gold. But as time went by and I used up the last of my Devlan mud I went looking for a replacement, which I found with AP Dark Tone. But when my pot of Gryphonne Sepia ran out late last year, and I discovered that GW had discontinued it, I couldn't find a good enough replacement from any another company.

So that got me thinking, how hard would it be to make my own? After a quick look around online I came across an old recipe for it on a forum. It called for a few different ingredients, most of which I had, but the results weren't that convincing. So I decided to try to make it myself with what I had on hand.

I grabbed some Windsor & Newton Burnt Sienna & Liquitex Matte medium and started playing around with ratios. For me, I found the best results when I mixed the two 1:1.

Here's some pics, just coz.

Part 1

Part 2

I tried a couple of different ratios of the two, as well as AP Soft tone, here's how tests looked:

1. Is the Sepia ink with a pretty strong dilution of water and matte medium. As you can see it's pretty weak, but that's only after one application, more layers should yield better results.

2. Is the AP Soft Tone with matte medium 50/50. What can I say, it's brown. Fail.

3. Is the Sepia and matte medium 50/50. I reckon this one is pretty damn close. I was sloppy laying it on, but with more care I think it's a win.

4. Is the straight AP Soft Tone. I'll be using that as just a brown ink from now on.

And here's a proper test on a painted mini. I'd painted this guy on the left a few months ago, but I wasn't sold on the gold effect for his mask and necklace. I can't quite remember what I used now, but whatever it was it wasn't very gold looking to me. I pulled him out of my display case and hit him with a coat of my new wash. The results are on the right, obviously. 

Super goldy!!!!

Not goldy looking enough.

So, what do you think? Does it work? Is it close enough to the old Gryphonne Sepia? I'd be interested to read your thoughts in the comments.

Oh, and I bet some of you may be wondering why I just didn't try and buy some second hand pots of Gryphonne Sepia on Ebay. Well, I tried for quite a while, but with no luck. The sellers either wanted way too much for it or there just wasn't any for sale. But last week I had look and found a few. So I don't need to use this recipe for a while:) It's still nice to know that I can make it in the future though, when there;s no Gryphonne Sepia out in the wild anymore.

Bye for now :)

Fakearse continues to build a tabletop......

Hello all, and welcome the next instalment of cheap arse hobby builds with Papafakis. If you missed the first riveting post about this project, have a look at the previous one by clicking on this thing.


Ok, on with the show;

Building a sump pit? Oil reservoir? Toxic waste dump? A hole in the ground?

Used an old hot water service water chamber, train set tracks and a shower hose for this Power generator?
Transfer pump? Elaborate toilet? Who knows?

Intense picture of the hole in the ground! 

Cheap arse plastic dumbbell cut in half and more shower hose.

A polystyrene box remade into a more interesting shape. I then
 painted it with a sandy PVA mix and added a few gubbins.

Toy stuff, great fodder for scrap heaps.

Only the finest tools were selected for the task of molding the plastic. 

I smote these bits but good!!! 

Before I unleashed my mighty warhammer upon the next batch I attacked them with my heat gun first.
Take THAT stupid plastic!!!

The entrance to the building was made from an old biscuit box.
A board game token was added for a sign.

I've got no idea what's going on in this shot.....just stuff n things.

The scrap piles were constructed from the heavily molested plastic pipes and other hobby detritus.

A few resin milk cartons and a half finished terrain piece.

Ooooh, more of this shit.....just in a different location.

Resin barrels, heated and deformed to make them look......like deformed barrels.

Roads were made out of bog roll and a weak PVA water mix.

I made some low hills in this area and then covered them with the arse paper and PVA mix.

I covered the foam hills with scrunched up foil to give them better texture. I then layered more unsoiled TP over it to give it even more
texture. The watchtower is another unfinished project.

I used so many rolls of shit wipes on this fucking board I lost count. 

And here's the money shot, pre flock stage. All the elements that I wanted were complete.

I used sawdust and stole copious amounts of the wife's tea, coffee and herb collection to flock this thing. She loves me so it's ok.

The shitty looking purple colour you can see on the board was just some old aerosol colour I had lying around. I used it to seal the
board before flocking, so the PVA would soak into the flock and not the board.

I know it looks like it's swimming in flock, and it is actually, but this was only temporary. I sprinkled heaps of flock onto the board to make
sure it was fully covered. Then I vacuumed it all up when it was dry and reused it.

Made this bodgy looking tool to lay some tracks on the roads....it failed.

Flocked to buggery!

Entrance to somewhere, the possibilities are endless....I suppose.

So it is here too, if you think about it.

This area will eventually be a burnt out and blasted forest, eventually.

Hole in the ground coming along.

Quick paint job with acrylic emulsions. Completed with the cheapest electric spray gun money could buy.

It's looking more like a gaming table don't you think?

Alrighty! Next up is to add some doors to a few places, a ladder to one of the mountains, fix up a few areas that the nether rags failed to cover properly and then I can get started on the washing and drybrushing task.


Ok, I need to go, bye :)