WIP - The Gold Mine - RESTORED PICTURES

[Malamute]

Outstanding piece of work. I think the best I have seen.

[Paul Hicks]

Amazing!

Cannot wait to this at Crisis.

Paul

[vikotnik]

Benbow, I have been following this thread with great interest.


After seeing the pics with the painted lanscape, I have to say again that You are one of the true(and few!) MASTERS. This is outstanding. The coulour You have used on the rock formations make this already superbly constructed table a true work of art.

Thanks for sharing these inspiring pics!

[Terrible Tim]

The level of painting, modeling and scenery building on this forum is fantastic....Sir Benbow (for I am sure you will be knighted for this) you have risen the standard to unattainable level for us mortals. May you and your scenery live forever! I salute you. You are a master and the rest of us are your humble students  .

TT.

p.s. Don't damage it in transit, to and from Crisis.

[cianty]

Wow, this is almost too good to be real! I mean, it looks so real it's too... whatever. Words fail me in the light of your talent. *huge thumbs up*

[Admiral Benbow]

Friends, I'm overwhelmed by your very nice comments and thank you all; I'm really glad you like the painted piece as I was quite unsure about the finish. Sometimes when you work on something for such a long time you get some kind of limited vision on the subject, no longer being able to decide if it is a success or not.

Some short answers to your questions:

@Ray Rivers: sure I will play with it!  That's not the problem, as I will definitely be VERY cautious with my creation. Alarming is the idea, that OTHER people will game around it ...  Seriously, I tried to build it as strongly a possible, and during the past years at shows I never had any major issues with people damaging my stuff. Hope that will continue ... 

@imurdentist: modelling the running water was no great alchemy, you just need to know what products will work. I started with my hot glue gun and glued some small strings of the hot stuff from the ground up to the end of the water trough to get a reliable support for the tiny "waterfall". For step 2 I used a railroad modelling product called "NOCH 2K Wasser-Gel" which is a clear two-component epoxy for creating realistic water effects. It's very easy to work with, and depending on the time you let it cure before dropping it to your landscape, you can create smooth ponds, running streams or even small waterfalls, and you can even use it over polystyrene of all sorts! I used it to create the running water down the Long Johns and for the ground water. After curing time of about 24 hours, I added as step 3 some standard clear 2-part-epoxy with a toothpick to those areas where the water would swirl and splash to the ground and pocked it around until it was nearly cured. These areas got some tiny amounts of light grey to white acrylic colour to simulate some froth and crests. A final coat of gloss varnish over the painted areas finished the water.

@hohlinger: you're correct, the standing tree stump and laundry building are both resin pieces from Snapdragon Studios. The prone tree piece is from Grendel, if I recall correctly.

@white knight: sure you can buy it  . I'll buy you a drink at the show and we could work out details. Just be prepared to have larger amounts of cash ready for the deal ... 

@all: the painting process seems to be of interest for some of you, so I try to summarize it as good as I can. It all started with a generous coat of a flat yellowish/ocre acrylic colour from a spray can to bring all the different materials together. Then I selected up to ten different earth tones from different acrylic colour brands ranging from Miniature Paints over Ral Partha and Vallejos to Lukas and even Tamiya, and tones from dark earth, ocres, greenish tints and reddish browns, just everything that looks good to simulate rock and earth. I started to wash the recesses and shady areas several times with different tones, working over to larger areas with lighter shades and then integrated the red rock parts. It seems to be essential not to overdue the reds, and to blend each area to the next by using a fresh brush with some clear water, so to say painting wet-on-wet like with oil colours. After that I started to dry-brush everything with lighter tones and using near white colours in the end, but I think the secret to successfully drybrushing such a large piece is not to do all areas over with one colour, but to use different tones here and there and so to avoid dull looking (chalky white) areas. It's not easy to explain as so much guessing and intuitive painting is involved, but I hope you get the great picture. And of course I used some paintings by great masters like Frank McCarthy as inspiration and pattern to orientate for the correct colours of real rock formations of the West.

I'm looking forward of meeting some of you "in the flesh" at the Crisis show, just contact me at the THS "Mexico" display/table.

[argsilverson]

Yes the painted one is wonderfully awful! It desrves to stand in a museum!

Alas, I will not see "in flesh", since I am unable to travel to Crisis.

Wish you good gaming with it.

[Regulator]

Boring, and that meant good 

[imurdentist]

Thanks! Might try your method, sounds easy to do 

[Bako]

Beautiful, just absolutely beautiful.

[cianty]

Thanks for the how-tos! I'll have to try the water effect sometime soon. It's perfect.

[uti long smile]

Amazing! A superb piece!

[Admiral Benbow]

Yesterday evening the last miniature was glued to the scene, and tomorrow morning I'll drive to Antwerp for the Crisis show, so with one spare day in between that seems to be pretty good planning ...! 

During drying times of the last painted miniatures and detail parts I added two variants of grass tufts from MiniNatur to some places to get some more colour variation (some green to all the browns). To speed up painting I used that en vogue ArmyPainters stuff, but instead of dipping the miniatures the tinted varnish was just brushed on, having more control about the thickness of the layer. I'm quite convinced by that medium, as it helps deepen the shades a little bit, is quick for finishing faces and hands and is a gloss varnish on top, so a real time saver when used properly. So here are the pics of the finished terrain piece with complete working crew:





I did a fun picture with a very nice background photo, which is just very small unfortunately; I really need to get some widescreen landscape calenders this year ... 



Now for some detail shots: Old Zedekiah comes from a long shift in the mine, it's time for a good meal (bacon & beans as usual) and a bottle of whisky ( )



Hung Lee collected all the dirty clothes around (he's famous for this new kind of business service) and is going for another long washing session this night ... Hhm, seems to be tired already 



And now the stars of the miner's show, the working class people themselves, with Big Jimmy Hong pulling the heavy ore carts, gaunt Sunset Carson at the shovel and Lane "Gent" Burnette relaxing with the pick:









That's it for this project. It was much fun planning and building it over the last four months, and I had as much fun showing it here and reading all your nice and supporting comments. Thank you all very much, and a special thanks to Alex for inventing this place!

Auf zu neuen Ufern!

[Operator5]

 

Out-friggin'-standing!!!

What a beautiful piece. I can't believe the detail of it.

[Captain Blood]

A fitting end to a stunning, gold standard project.
Good luck at Crisis. I'm sure you'll get loads of plaudits, and they'll all be richly deserved!
The devil may be in the detail, but the angels are there too.
Anyone who goes as far as making 28mm scale bacon rashers and baked beans (!) in a 28mm scale frying pan, is worth all the praise they get!

Gorgeous.