Hello!

And now for some lighter fantasy themed w.i.p.
I've been carrying around the namegiving dragon for a few years now, from show to show as a demo painting piece. This year I decided it was finally time to finish it and put it up on a propper base. (and also because I've been telling folks for years, it will soon be finished )
So for the past few month I've been working on that certain base, that I had on my mind for as long as I am painting on that dragon now.

Well, here are the first steps:

To create a propper and sturdy base that would fit nicely onto the wooden socket, I had chosen for this project, I built a cup-shaped one-shot casting mould out of aluminium foil around the top of the wooden socket and made sure it was sealed tight around it.






Then I mixed up some plaster-like Stewalin and poured it into the "cup". I also use Stewalin for my Hirstarts moulds. Great stuff for casting parts!
While still soft and wet, I placed some ruined parts into the Stewalin, also cast from Stewalin.




After the whole cast had set and dried, I removed the metal foil and testfitted the dragon onto it.



As you can see, there are still some fragments of the aluminium foil stuck in the Stewalin.
I also cleaned those off later.

Well, that's it for now. Soon I will post more on how I went on with it...
Thanks for watching.

Cheers
Dirk

Great iadea for dioramas ! thanks for share-

jhonn

Thank you, Jhonn!

So, now on with the next step.
After the casting had dried, I used some airdrying repair putty to define the dragon's place on the base and to fix some more ruined parts and debris onto it. The "Molto wood repair putty" (that's what it's called in Germany in the DIY) also acts as soil on the ground, due to its nice structure when dried.







I also drilled a small hole into the base and underneath the dragon, so I can use a small steel wire to pin the dragon to the base, lateron.





Well, so much for now...
Thanks for watching
Cheers
Dirk

Great work and what a lovely idea. Thanks Dirk.

Xenofon

Thank you, Xenofon!

Well, time to go on. So what else to put up on a ruined base?
Yes, some trees! So I started to bent some wire and built some trees.




Then I attached these frames to the base and covered them in some more repair putty.





More foliage to follow soon.

Thanks for looking
Dirk

Excellent work so far! Following with great interest!
In the next step, please elaborate more on foliage (material and application). Thanks a lot!
Cheers,
Zeno

Thank you, Zeno!

Well, yeah, next up is indeed some more about making and using foliage in this little scene.
While also building up the trees a bit more, I started building some shrubs with a very simple tool: The decorative hole punch!
With their help I punched out some leaves out of simple note paper. Then I glued these leaves together with some woodglue (tinted with some brown paint).
As you can see, I also textured the leaves a bit with the glue.




And that's how they look after a little bit of paint.



Unfortunately there are only a few different leaf shaped punches on the market and most of them are too large for this kind of scales, so nothing realy to make trees with for 28mm.

If you have any questions, fire away!

Thanks for watching and cheers, until next time...
Dirk

Thanks Dirk for sharing this technique.
I'm not sure how big are the squares on your cutting mat, probably 1 cm x 1 cm and if it is so, I think the leafs are to big for 1/32 (54 mm), 1/24 (75 mm) scales. Nevertheless, the technique is very realistic for bigger scales and it will look very good in your application.
Do you have a suggestion how to create realistic tree foliage suitable for 54mm and 75 mm other then cutting them with a hobby knife from paper?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Cheers,
Zeno

Good Morning!

Indeed, Zeno, those squares are 1x1cm. And the larger of the two leaves is around 2,5cm long. So, they are indeed much too big for using them as tree leaves in those scales. But for building up these exotic looking shrubs, they work pretty well.

I have thought about how cool it would be to have a punch, that would do 10 slightly different leaves with one punch out of simple paper. I even talked to some folks about producing such a tool but it would have been quite expensive. Well, as I think about it now, maybe this would be a great item for a kickstarter. I am sure a lot of modelbuilders would love to have such a punch.

But back to current reality.
There is allways the good, if somewhat expensive, alternative of using photo etched parts. And I have picked up quite a few of these over the years. They come in handy now. There are a few different brands to chose from on the market today. Which is good, as you can vary with the same type of plant from the different manufacturers and bring some diversity to your scene. On this special project I choose some parts from Scalelink and Eduard. Especially Scalelink has a ton of different foliage stuff and even in different scales!

On the next photo you can see the two different kinds of fern I use. The upper is from Eduard, the lower is from Scalelink. Unfortunately I haven't taken a photo of the unpainted pieces. But you will see some other scalelink stuff in unpainted state, lateron.



Here I also found an older image, with some basecoated ferns. Eduard on the left, Scalelink to the right.





There's a very important point about using photo etched foliage, besides a propper paintjob. As all photo etched parts come in a flat 2D state, due to the fact, that they are made from thin brass sheet, they need to be bend realistically, after cut out. As you can see above, all the ferns tips are rolled in more or less.
Well, I am far from beeing an expert, but I've seen a lot of photo etched stuff, that has only been cut out and stuck flat onto a base and usually that did not look very good.
On the Scalelink ferns I also used some woodglue, to give the stems a bit more structure and dimension.

Well, that's it already for now. See you soon with some more progress.
Thanks for watching and have a nice sunday.
Dirk

Thanks a lot Dirk!
Those ferns are looking very nice and yes, photo etched accessories are always a solution, expensive though.
Will follow closely
Cheers,
Zeno

This is coming along very well and is very interesting.
Cheers
John

Thanks guys.

Well, as I promised b4, here are some more Scalelink foliage parts, I've used on the trees.

















Again, I've used some wood glue to build up some strukture on the branches.
I imagine the trees to be very old, almost dead, with only some life left in them. So only a few green branches grow out of their trunks. Don't know, if they will realy look like that in the end, but I'm trying. ;-)

More next time...

Cheers
Dirk

Looking nice so far!
What technique and glue did you used to fix those photo etched branches to the trunks? They look very, very good!
Following closely!
Cheers,
Zeno

Hello!

Thanks, Zeno. Well, attaching the branches was quite simple. I just drilled small holes and fixed each branch with some woodglue into them. Then I applied some more of the woodglue onto the twiggs, to give them some more volume and structure to make them look more natural.

And here I continue with some mushrooms I sculpted out of ProCreate 2k-sculpy.




I also made a single thicker broken off branch, that will be put on the base for a little bit more realism.




Then I attached the mushrooms all around onto the base.




And here's a little "try-on" with the dragon:




That's it for now, folks. More next time.

Thanks for watching and cheers
Dirk

Hi there!

Can you spot the little fella I've sculpted to the back of the base?




Well, here's a little closeup:





Cheers
Dirk

Good morning, guys.

Well, time to go on here.

First another closeup of the tiny mole:




Here I added some photo etched ivy.






I also sculpted a little nest to put up in one of the threes:




Here allready attached to the tree:



More to follow soon...

Again, thanks for looking
Cheers
Dirk

Good evening.
Thank you for your kind comment, Nap. I am also a great fan of busts. But then again, I paint and build, what ever finds my favor. ;-)

Well, here are some of the plants, I've shown earlier, that where made with the help of an art punch.
Now with some paint slapped on, they look quite convincing, I think.




And some paint also starts to work it's magic on the scene.








More to follow soon.
As allways, thanks for watching.
Cheers
Dirk

As I told a girlfriend just the other day: This is not gonna be a Halloween-cookie!

Sooo many great ideas and techniques in this thread, and a great concept as well! Amazing stuff!