Round Three Report from Garness-at-Home - Part 5

Dread Pirate Garness continues:

In keeping with my winter theme, I wanted Vidar's magic sword to be a frost blade, capable of turning all manner of things to ice. So I created a base that would have him turning a portion of a river to ice. I began by drawing a simple outline on a piece of blue foam, which I cut to fit on a GW large round monster-size base.

I cut out the river section, and the section for the base to rest on. I added other pieces of blue foam to make a small hill or rise just behind Vidar, like he was coming down to the river from higher land. I cut the pieces to fit, and used a hot glue gun to glue the parts together. I cut the round base section in half, and glued it down into the space for Vidar to stand in. I then mixed Ceramcoat Pthalo Green, Autumn Brown and Navy Blue together to get a deep, cold-looking river color and painted this in the river section.

I mixed up Liquitex Stucco Gel Medium, some ballast, and Americana Soft Black for dirt and rock along the riverbank, and painted it on. What is nice about the stucco medium is that it allows for a wide range of control over the grittiness of the dirt and rock. It comes as fine as sand, but by adding varying sizes of ballast, the grit can be increased quite a bit. It also allows me to add the base color right to the mix and then paint it right on, rather than glue the base, paint it, and then highlight it. I get two steps out of the way with one swish of the brush!

Once all of that dried, I mixed up the same stucco gel with a mix of Pearlscale white, pure white, and a tiny bit of Blue Heaven and applied this all over the base. I applied layer after layer to build up the "snow," especially on the snow drifts and overhangs. I used Transparent Hot Glue to get the ice bridge - gradually building it up to the correct height - and added a little of the "snow" to the first few steps from land onto the bridge.

The following day I went back and used Golden Clear Gel Medium to create the water and icicles coming from the ice bridge. I added layer after layer, adding a little bit of thinned-out bluegreen and brown to each layer to get a little depth to the base.

That is about it, really. I hope you have enjoyed this report, and I hope you have learned something from it. I am really enjoying the challenge to push myself to the limits, and come up with something that is not too over the top but is fresh and new. I really liked the idea of this grizzled heroic character using his magic sword to create ice bridges to the realm of men and go raiding. Thanks all once again! It has been an honor for me to participate in the contest amongst such talented artists.

See the Finished Pictures