EXT: Ruined Hut

 More ruins for my snowy bog theme. This time, the remains of a shack!

That burned down, fell over and then sank into the swamp.

This is the result of some rather over-watered concrete my wife was doing some life casting with (infant feet, proper memorabilia stuff). "Can you do anything with this?" she asked, handing me a tub of grey slop. Of course I could!

I poured it onto a rough circle of corrugated cardboard, backed that with some blister pack plastic, and got busy with the lolly sticks. It took four days to dry to a point where I could handle it without snapping, as well as two coats of watered-down PVA to give it a bit of extra toughness. But it came out alright after that.

I'd used sticks from the local park as the knocked-down trees I favour, because they look a lot better than anything I can paint or model. Then I forgot to mask them when I sprayed it all black, and had to paint them anyway. Not too bad - Dryad Bark drybrushed with Steel Legion Drab and Underhive Ash, with the broken wood done in Zandri Desert with Agrax Earthshade.  It's not life, but it'll do.

Moral of the story - don't summon fire elementals in a wooden structure.

Once it was painted, I set fire to it.

Seriously! I know that's a daft thing to do, but I wasn't happy with the broken ends of the lolly sticks. I wanted it to look burned. It was only a partial success, as I was pretty tentative with the candle. Where I let it take, though, I got a nice charcoaly look that I probably could have done just using paint. But then I wouldn't have had such fun, crouched on the balcony like a pyro, dripping wax on the edges of the model by mistake. Covered that with snow, couldn't pick it off.

Elsewhere, some more of my Mantic haul is painted up.

Abyssal Dwarf Lesser Obsidian Golem #1

They're designed as Chaos Abyssal Dwarf rock monsters, and they've got a very natty black and lava paintjob on the website. I've got three, and one will probably end up being something like that. I thought I'd do something else for the others, and I started with a Frostgrave-style Ice Construct.

 Blues and brasses, plenty of bicarb snow and a lick of gloss for shine. Nice model! A bugger to assemble, though - Mantic plastic needs superglue, and the joints don't fit together specially well. Got there in the end, though!