After what feels like a long time, we're back! With the global pandemic going on we at Drawn Combat (along with many of you fine, reputable Hobbits) have been at a loss for games over the past few months. Instead, we've been knuckling down on the hobby side of things whether it be finishing up armies, starting entirely new ones or, in the case of a few of us, finally getting to work on some display boards we'd had planned. Today I'll be walking you through how I went about bringing a little piece of Khazâd-Dum to life in miniature form.
In this board, there are three main components: The pillars, the scaffolding and the board surface itself. First of all, we're going to start with the pillars as they're probably the longest part of the board itself (at least the way I went about doing it!). During lockdown, I got my hands on a resin 3D printer and after printing a few small bits of scenery I wanted to see if I could take it any bigger. The problem was, I'm not the best sculpter both physically and digitally. After a bit of searching, I found a spot on digital file by Angelo's Workshop (a full list of links and materials will be at the end of the article) of the pillars from Dwarrowdelf. I know not everyone has access to a printer, but there are a variety of services available online to print 3D files, and I would recommend resin over plastic purely for the smoother finish.
After a good amount of trial and error, I was left with some pillars!
In the end (due to the size of my printer and available resin) I had to print each pillar in three sections and it didn't leave me with the smoothest connecting points - out comes the green stuff and files. There was also the issue of the cracks in the pillars (as originally sculpted). My vision was for a Dwarrowdelf in it's prime during Durin's reign over the mountain kingdom. These were easily filled in with green stuff, but when working on the pillars I had the idea to leave one slightly damaged to add a little more flavour to the build.
This flavour was going to be achieved by adding a scaffolding around the 'damaged' pillar, I imagined maintenance work and construction would still be going on, so gave the opportunity to break the board up a little and add some more details. To work on this I picked up a pack of balsa wood of varying sizes and a bag of matchsticks from a craft shop and broke out the hobby knife. Starting with a sheet of 3mm thick balsa, I cut 3mm width strips to form the main scaffolding skeleton and started sticking all the bits together with wood glue leaving adequate time to dry between constructing each part. One of the pillars was constantly on hand to reference make sure I had enough room to work with.
With most of the structure built, I did a preliminary section of boards made from matchsticks to solidify the structure a little more and make it easier to work with. It was at this point it struck me that the joints looked a little bare and odd, so I cracked out some 0.8mm braided rope to do a small wrap around to give it the impression it was all lashed together.
All that was left now for the construction was the long process of cutting to size attaching all of the remaining boards made from the matchsticks. This took some time. I did however decide to add another level of scaffold skeleton on top, but after some conferring with the DC team left it bare of floorboards to avoid it looking too cluttered.
All that was left now for this part of the build was a bit of colour to bring it to life. This was achieved with a 1:1 mix of Citadel Contrast Wyldwood and Lahmian Medium to make the pot go a little bit further as the balsa wood just drinks it straight up! Afterwards the ropes at the joints were coated in Screaming Skull and washed with Agrax Earthshade to add a little bit of tone and shade. Some more detail would come later, but I left that until I had the board mostly finished and also decided to make a ladder with some left over bits that I had!
The next step was the big one - assembling and coating the board. The board size I had in mind was to fit into my Kallax shelving unit, so after cutting a chunky 2cm thick piece of mdf to size I gave a heavy coat of masonry paint and then smoothed over with a hard piece of card to give some nice semi-smooth surface detail (enough to not look lumpy, but not so much that there was no texture at all) and when dry I added the pillars with some wood glue.
Now onto the painting - I picked up a can of grey spray paint close enough to the final colour I was aiming for and coated the entire thing, making sure to get into the small nooks on the pillars and not miss anything off. Once dry, a watered down coat of Nuln Oil was applied to the entire board and pillars, taking care to not allow it to pool too heavily in ares of the pillars, removing any excess. After what felt like an eternity of waiting for the shade to dry, a combined mix of Dawnstone and Terminatus Stone (both Dry Citadel colours, mixed 3:2) was then used as a drybrushed coat all of the board and pillars, and then worked more into on the parts that would have been more foot travelled. The scaffolding was then added, and using the same paint mix, signs of wear and dirt were added along the floorboards, ramp and ladder to make it appear more used. The sides of the board were then coated in a very matte black (Stuart Semple) to frame it from every angle.
Now that the main construction was done, it was time for some more details. Once again I broke out the printer and got to finding files for various tools and masonry items: a wheelbarrow, sledgehammers and pickaxes. This would be placed around the scaffolding section of the board, and some old sprue was also cut up to form bits of chiseled stone to be used. With all the pieces in place, it was time to arrange the Dwarves and get the whole thing into the studio to photograph!
After this section of images were shot, I had the urge to do something a little more dramatic with the lighting, cue the fiery presence of the Balrog!
Well that about covers it for the making of this display board, we'll hopefully have some more hobby content on it's way for you soon. If you have any questions at all, please let us know in the comments!
Materials:
Balsa Wood, Wood Glue, Matchsticks (all of these available at hobby and craft shops).
0.8mm Braided Rope by Gale Force Nine
Masonry Paint - Goodhome Masonry Tester
Grey Spray Paint - Halfords
Citadel Paints - Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade, Dawnstone, Terminatus Stone, Lahmian Medium, Wyldwood, Screaming Skull
Black - Stuart Semple
Pillars made using Angelo's Workshop sculpt (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3652943) and printed on Elegoo Mars 3.
