FROM THE WORKBENCH: A very productive weekend!

Wow...For the first time in what seems to be "Ages", I spent the majority of the weekend at the table, building, painting, ummm...cleaning up the mess that is the "game/work room"....and finishing and starting new projects.

Mucho stuff to talk about...

First off:

In May of this year I went ahead and asked on TMP (http://www.theminiaturespage.com/); about a 15mm scale garbage dump. I didn't want the standard "junk yard", of stuff...I wanted "Garbage"...since in most third world countries garbage dumps are picked over by looters and scavengers, most of the things that you would see in a US Garbage Dump, would be taken in a 3rd world.

I didn't get much in the form of answers, but I did get some good ideas on building my own.

So I did.

It took me about a month, (in between life, work, sickness, 2 dead computers, 2 ACW reenactments, and a ton of "other" projects)....But I got it done.

Here's the end result... (The pictures are a little larger than usual, due to the fact that I wanted the readers to be able to see "what" is in there.

(Eeeeewww...what's that smell???...and the green stuff leaking from the pile???)

The Pile of Rotting Trash measures about 3 inches long by about 2 1/2 inches wide. It's a nice little square of mouldering smelly nasty stuff. At first I was perplexed about how to make it, but after thinking about it, I experiementsed and it was successful! (Instructions below)...

(All that is missing is the swarm of 15mm flies...fun fun fun...)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Materials needed....

1: Sheet styrene/plasticard: Thin

2: "Grey Pumice" Groundwork material. (Grey Pumice is a waterbased material that comes in a plastic container, (which has a future as an oil storage drum), and has a gritty, lumpy feel. It can be spread on and worked while wet. It's easily painted, and makes good groundwork.

3: Toilet paper...(clean preferably..unless you want a realistic "smell")....

4: Parts of "stuff" from your bits box.

MAKING IT:

1: Cut the styrene/plasticard to the desired shape. (I made mine square so that I could make 1-2 more piles and attached them in any variable shape.) You could also make the bases irregular circles, etc...

2: Plop on the Grey Pumice. It's like working with sticky wet sand...I found out that using a popsicle stick is a good way to slop it onto the plastic. No need to be neat on the project...slop that stuff on!

Make sure that when you put it on, that you put it on IRREGULARLY...(lots of it forming a shapeless "mound")...Be creative...make little piles, and open pit areas, etc...

3: Now SLOWLY cover the wet gooey mess with toilet paper. For best results use the cheap 1 sheet/1 ply stuff and apply it 1 sheet at a time, overlapping in layers..wrinkle some of it up, mash some of it up...This is going to be a nasty pile of "stuff"...so neatness does NOT count here...

4: When you are done giving the messy pile "form" with the TP, look in your bits box and find those parts that you are NEVER going to use...(old pieces of styrene beams, old wheels, broken sprues...pieces of "crap" that you can't figure out what to do with...) Start to insert this "stuff" into the wet pile at random, at all angles. Put some on top of each other, set others off to the side. Don't worry about ripping the Toilet paper...that's what it's there for and it adds to the effect.

5: Let dry for about 3-5 days...

PAINTING:

1: Best thing to do is start with a dark coat of BURNT UMBER (don't use black)...

2: Thin the paint with water so that you have "runny paint", (like a wash), and start to apply it to the entire pile, (You will notice that it soaks in...good...try to get as much "white" TP painted as possible. Yes you will miss spots...don't worry. Let each layer dry for about an hour.

3: Next is to get a color that says "Mouldering nasty stuff"...I used a mixture of thinned black, hilighted with shades of dark green, and then drybrushed with "Velvet Teal"... I did this pretty much over the major pile.

4: Then I added the rest of the colors...shades of brown...mixed with green for moldy soil, light green mixed with jade green for "chemical leaks"...painting and weathering the "Crap" (bits), that are in the pile...a light drybrush of black...some bits of color...it's a good chance to see how many colors of paint you can put to one project.

5: Seal it and you are done!

And that's it...

All that is missing is the "smell" and the buzzing of the flies...

Let me know what you think....