Salute 2024... DEMO GAME BOARD PART 2- Painting

 

Wotcha everyone. I have been cracking on with my demo game board. Having carefully planned what order I was going to do things in I immediately forgot and painted the water first.

This of course means that when I airbrush the rocks next I will get overspray on my water and have to repaint it... ah well. Most of this won't be seen as the water is being heavily pigmented but something will show through so best to give it a once-over anyway. I have faded to light green around the rocks to indicate other things going on below the surface and fading down through the water. Hopefully this will continue to be visible in places once the water is finished. 

The rocks were a good opportunity to try out the new airbrush setup. I first sprayed everything matt black, paying careful attention to the cave mouth and deepest recesses. I oversprayed this with a patchy raw sienna mix and a general grey, not worrying much about colour but trying to give a good overall coverage and pick out some of the main forms. I was worried this was a bit too purple so when it came to drybrushing highlights over I mixed the light grey with some yellow. This has helped bring the colour more neutral. I did a vigorous drysbrush over the whole thing with a mid grey, then a more targeted, lighter drybrush with pure white and a tad of yellow. Only looking to generate contrast in my tones at this point, not overly bothered about colouration. I drybrushed the rock pillars closest to the shoreline more heavily as on the photo reference I have these are lighter in colour.

To soften the drubrushing and add colour into the rocks I diluted some raw sienna and burnt umber with flow aid and dappled it in patches over the surface. I also did this with the black to knock back any areas which came up too colourful and reiterate cracks and shadows. I haven't used the flow aid (4011 Reducer) before, having just stuck with water in the past. The 4011 did make quite a difference, not running/dripping so much and drying faster so I could control the placement better. I was only using cheapy craft acrylics so thought the pigments might not dilute into a wash well, but was pleasantly surprised.

I did a bit of small brush work on the basalt columns to suggest a more geometric scarring on their surfaces and washed them heavily in black afterwards since the basalt is usually dark grey and should look a little different in colour from the rocks surrounding it. I have brushed some green 'algae' around the tops of the columns along the shoreline and will work into this more when I see what is left exposed by the water effects.

Speaking of which... here are my dams (thick, melamine-faced MDF which I have also covered in sellotape for a definitely easy-peel, shiny surface) in place and the resin (Easy Composites GlassCast 10) poured. So far so good... more on that in the next post.