Where have the last 3 weeks gone to? It seems completely unreal that I’m sat here, typing this and it’s the middle of June – especially considering the awful weather the UK has (and still is) having. With the exception of ten days or so of lovely weather at the beginning of May, it’s been wet, cold and miserable, not typical summer weather, even for Britain! Sadly it’s not conducive to painting or modelling as all you really want to do is to hole yourself up indoors in the warm and wait until it all improves. It doesn’t help that the cough I’ve had for the past two months has freshened up again as I’ve got a bit of a cold (the bi-product of sleeping in a tent a couple of weekends ago).
What this ultimately means is that my GD entry progress has been quite small, which considering there is only just over 3 months left until Golden Demon, is a little worrying. I’m holding onto a few big positives though.
Firstly, between now and GD I have 8 weekends that are currently completely and utterly clear (plus the weekend of GD). On top of this, I have one weekend where my other half is away and although I’m going to be converting the garage I will have some time spare. Also from next Wednesday onwards, I’ve a lot less scheduled in for the evenings. Even an hour every evening for a couple of weeks is quite a significant amount of time overall.
The lower “rocky” element of the base is now complete and has been filled, sanded and sealed so that it looks like one large rocky outcrop. I’ve raided various bits boxes and pilfered from other sources and have gathered together all of the bits needed to cover the top of the base in debris and such like. Unlike the bottom element where I used GW sand, I am going to use fish tank gravel for the top, which looks like finely crushed quartz. This should provide quite a big visual difference so that the eye will be drawn to the top rather than the bottom (the purpose of which is really only to add height to the whole miniature). The top will also be festooned with various snipped elements of guitar wire, pipes, plastic structures and other such battlefield scrap. Of course on top of all this I’ll finish everything off with snow.
Magic Sculp is brilliant stuff and I can easily see how I can achieve what I want to with the cloak. It dries exceptionally solid (verging on Milliput) and goes to the leathery stage after around an hour. I’ll still use Green Stuff for the actual fur though as it is easier to work with (much less gooey) and I believe will provide a better end result for that element. If I don’t have too much to do tonight, I may try and sculpt the basic shape, which would be quite good.