Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Follow the Cairns

Pilgrim:
Just follow the Cairns to the Groaning Vale, 
The land where the wind does cry;
Follow them thence to the Needlesheets,
Where the Mountain of Asps does lie.

But dare you not to disturb the stones, 
Lest bestir you the envy of forgotten bones,
For lonely's the soul beneath the rock--
'till a pilgrim it does descry. 

Follow the Cairns, my dear pilgrim: 
Just follow, follow the Cairns.




Just a bit of atmosphere in the form of rhyme, to get the imagination tingling. I'm going to try doing a little more of that now. Maybe the added interest will keep me posting a little more frequently, while perhaps adding some zest to otherwise fairly dry how-to articles.

Anyway, here are the final products of my little series on quick n' dirty cairn terrain pieces. You can find the previous article here.

Since that article, I have coated the CD base with sand and PVA glue, primed the pieces with gray automotive primer, and then dry-brushed the pine bark "stones" with lighter and lighter gray mixes to achieve the stone texture.

The bases were treated to a similar dry-brush method working from a base of chocolate brown. I then added a decorative lichen, soaked it in more PVA and some ground foam, and then treated the whole base with a home-made blend of dried coffee grounds, dried tea-leaves, ground foam, and home-made grass flock.

Here's the result again, from another angle.




Easy peasy. Let me know what you think!

3 comments :

  1. What great looking pieces of scenery !
    I should take the time to do some of these because minis never look as good as with such nice terrain around.

    And please keep the rhyme, though I'm french I really appreciate reading the stuff.

    Your post actually proves the "sparkle of life" is not always in the main attraction (descriptions and minis) but sometimes lays in the details like adding rhyme or in the pieces of scenery...

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  2. Thanks! This particular one takes very little time and very few materials. I grabbed the pine bark on a walk past a neighbor's garden.

    I also like when bloggers add 'flavor text' I was inspired to do it by the likes of The Tears of Isstvan(http://isstvan.blogspot.com/ You should check it out if you haven't. Very cool, and occasionally John Blanche himself comments on the posts.) Our hobby is about creating worlds and stories, right?

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  3. Very true ! It's the kind of stuff that turns lead with acrylics into fantastic stories and wonderful laddish evenings.

    I tried that on a post : http://leadplague.blogspot.fr/2013/02/the-lone-wanderer-battle-chaos-part4.html but my level in English doesn't allow me to do better at the moment :/

    Thanks for the link, I actually didn't know this blog!

    By the way, I would totally love a tutorial about your recipe for you home-mad flock, it looks very convincing...

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