Trench Crusade

….And we made some crosses in preparation for the finishing touches!

Also prepped some “posts” from matchsticks for wrapping barbwire around (didnt take a photo of these as well ….. not particularly interesting).

The small painted piece in the photo was my “test bed” for painting, and basing and to get general ideas on how the final things would look.

A fairly simple day of progress …

Made up some Gabions brought from Renedra.

These were sprayed black with a desert sand highlight followed by a light baneblade brown highlight.

The “contents” were made by mixing PVA with some desert sand and brown (about a 50/50 mix) and cat litter.

Painting was simple and done in three stages

brown wash

brown wash

black wash

Here is how things are starting to shape up …

I didnt take too many “work in progress” photos, but for the trench pieces, I didnt want simple straight lines in either a square or rectangle and so planned to add in more interest.

The polystyrene was cut in a rough square/rectangle, but then just had some angles cut into it to form a base outline. I didnt go in with too many plans, and just cut the next shape of the piece a angle or two ahead of where I had glued into place the wood planks.

I tried to add a feel of height and undulation by cutting down into the top surface as well as cutting in “retaining walls” or something “gabion-ish”

Here is one piece in its raw state once all the planking has been added.

And this is it looks all together (currently)

For transportation / storage purposes, the Cross was magnetised as that seemed like the most sensible thing to do!

For now this is where this piece will be left – all the additional details (sandbags, barb wire, graves etc will be added later)

One of the things I wanted to try was to add both posters to the terrain, but also will be using them on my Trench Pilgrims that Ive ordered.

Before applying, I sanded down the back to make the paper thinner, and then dipped into watered down PVA glue which made it very pliable when fixing to the wood.

Again, happy with how it turned out

Next as part of a test piece I made a base for the Cross to sit on and to test some of the methods I planned to use throughout on future pieces.

The height of the base was cut down to about 40mm.

The concrete base was made from Styrofoam which was “weathered” by rattling it around in a jar with stones as well as rolling some tin foil over it.

The wood is washed twice with a brown wash and then once with a black wash.

The ground texture is real soil (sieved and cooked in an oven for 45 minutes).

The base hasnt been completed yet but its got me to a good place to continue.

The cross was the first piece to be made to get into the project and to also check I liked the direction I was planning on going.

To be different to all the things Ive seen on Youtube, I decided that my cross was still be under construction – in the final stages “prior to the next concrete pour”.

The tarpaulin was just tissue soaked in watered down PVA with a mix of desert sand and bittersweet chocolate (dark brown) paint from Decoart. once in place and dried, a thin brown wash was applied to the recesses just to dirty it up a bit.

The rope is just scale model rigging rope.

Really happy with how it turned out.