OK, so originally, I was painting astronauts for Lunar, then I got distracted and started the minis for a one-off DnD campaign for my daughter and her friends, but I got distracted again and dug up the two unpainted Armadillo shuttles I still had lying around, you know; as a little palette cleanser after all those fantasy characters. But as those are stalling a bit because of my quest for the right decals, yesterday afternoon, after some chores and assorted other real life activities, I had a bit of spare time on my hands, so I decided on a quick terrain project I've been wanting to do for, well, forever...
Just a small, quick project. I've got all of the components, the weather is good; there's some time to spare, what could possibly go wrong? Right?
So I set to work, cutting some bases form a scrap piece of MDF with my jigsaw and beveling the edges with a hand sander. This took all of 30 minutes, and I ended up with 5 small bases, which I figured should be enough. I then hot-glued different sized styrene balls together, using cocktail sticks for pinning when putting two or more balls on top of each other.
After that, I decided to pull out all of the stuff I have accumulated over the years, because they're meant to be used and not just hoarded after all. So I dug up my precious pot of Mod Podge. Because that stuff is not easy to come by in these parts, and I picked up a pot about two years back, and that had been sitting around waiting for just the right project.
This one, as it turns out.
The stuff is great, but feels to me to be exactly the same as the wood glue I've been using for decades. It looks, feels, smells and behaves exactly like the trusty Bison Wood Glue I've used many liters of over the years. It's just more expensive
Anyway; I used the Mod Podge with some green coloured paint, baking soda, tile grout and sand to create a pigmented paste, which I first painted onto the styrene balls. Then, using the same brush, I stipled the paste, to get rid of any brush strokes.
I let this dry for the time being, while I broke a ridiculous amount of cocktail sticks in two and pinned them into a scrap piece of styrofoam. Using a dark red spraypaint, I then basecoated the lot. And when that was dry, I highlighted each individual pin with Blood Red, a Dark orange and finally a very bright orange.
By this time, the green paste was dry (enough), so I did a couple of quick drybrushed highlights on the top of all of the spheres working towards yellow.
And after adding some basing material I started applying the spines by first pricking a hole with the sharp end of a cocktail stick and then shoving the red spines in there with a dollop of wood glue. I had made so many, that I had figured I might use the surplus for maybe another base, because I had in the meantime seen a YouTube video by Minisodes in which he made one of these cacti, but it had been partially blown apart by some explosion (a bolter round perhaps?), with ooze gooping out of it and I wanted to emulate that for sure.
But as it turns out, many painted spines was just not enough spines. At all! So I discovered I had run out of spines halfway my fourth base (with the largest one still to go).
However, it had become late already, and dark outside (and cold), and I had obligations in the morning, so I broke the same amount of cocktail sticks on two as before, put them in the existing holes in the styrofoam and decided to wait till the morning to spray them.
This left me with just the basecoating of the bases, which would at least have plenty of drying time overnight.
So Sunday afternoon, after lunch, I was able to spray them, and quickly apply the highlights, just like before. This way, it's actually really quick.
Once dry, I added the spines to the last two bases. Then it was on to some quick highlighting of the basing material (exactly the same as I do on all of my miniature bases) and the adding of some flock and a few tufts. And because this
is 40K, I also added an ork skull somewhere between the cacti, and then they were done!
Had the spines not run out, I would have finished the cacti in one afternoon and evening, with a hands on time of approximately 3 hours. Now it took a little bit more, but al in all, I have not spent more than 4 hours working on these.
I've been wanting to have a bunch of these for almost as long as I've been in the hobby (1989), and now I finally have some to grace my (2nd ed 40K) table. I'm actually giddy with joy. This project was FUN. It brought back memories of old White Dwarfs, and the tongue in cheek silliness that permeated 40K back in the day, before everything went full on grimdark and serious. I love the sense of accomplishment this quick project gave me, and the good time I had doing it. I might well do some more of these simple (and iconic) 2nd edition 40K projects, to populate and entire table.
And to sign off, here's a picture in the best White Dwarf style of a squad of Imperial Fists Space Marines disembarking from their Rhino in the middle of an alien cactus forest...
12 November 2009, 10:11:47 AM
