Gorram Tracy Island

An hour last night to finish the water and ten minutes before work this morning to add a little white to the waves near the shore and Tracy Island is done!

I’ll varnish it all in the future but the weather here is too driech for it right now.

This was a perfect little project for right now – work has been pretty awful the last few weeks and my doctor has put me onto anxiety meds daily. Coming home, putting on some music and just chipping away at this has been a wonderful way to just drown it all out for a few hours.

I’ll update this project once I get the minis from Pendraken and start to work on the scenario but, for now, this is finished.

The paper layer was dry this morning and I had a late start at work so grabbed my paints to get cracking before leaving.

Four paints in total were used; titanium white, black, burnt umber and phthalocyanine green (phthalo for short). I used pretty cheap Pebeo acrylics and followed the guide linked in the last video.

Starting at the shoreline with a light brown (white and a touch of umber) then add more green m, up to pure phthalo then start adding in black as the water gets deeper. Each paint is out on in a line and then you go in with a clean, wet brush and blend the tones together. I found I liked blending dark into light more than the other way round as I want to water to appear deeper.

This was the point I realised I don’t have enough phthalo to do the whole way round the island. Bugger. I don’t have time to grab another bottle today so it is tools down until tomorrow night.

I’ve used this method before on my Kings of War Armada bases but this is the largest surface I’ve worked on. I took it directly from this video – there’s a lot we can learn from the model railway people.

This stage took maybe 90 minutes to go round the whole island. I used the last bit of Mod Podge, watered down and now we just need to leave it dry… and pray it doesn’t warp the MDF. I forgot until after I’d done it that I was going to put down a layer of Shellac to seal it before I started. It might only be Monday but my brain is already mince.

The sponge bushes had mostly dried and it was time to crack out the crepe paper and pipe cleaners.

Showing that thirty years can give us progress – pipe cleaners now come pre-coloured in brown instead of having to paint them or wrap them in brown crepe paper like the instructions said.

The palm leaves were folded bits of crepe paper cut to the shape and then messily glued to the pipe cleaner. After the first one felt a little weak, I decided to also wrap one of the bits of cut off paper round the leaves to secure them on better. While they fit the look of the original perfectly, I think I’ll have to make several spares cos they just don’t feel like they’ll hold up to much of a battering during gameplay. I used a pointy file to poke holes into the papier-mache to put the pipe cleaners into.

The smaller palms were made much the same way but the leaves were kept in pairs. I then joined several sets of them together with a tiny split pin and bent one arm up to secure them, the other stayed straight to stick into the ground.

All in all, this is mostly done. There are a couple of small things need done; a ladder down to the beach because stairs were too obnoxious and a cave up in the back left corner which links down to a secret inlet on that side (in the show this is where Thunderbird 4 launches from but in our scenario it gives the Good Guys somewhere else to land).

The main thing is going to be the water though. The original didn’t have any because the craft was only the footprint of the island but as a wargaming table, water is necessary. I debated just using some blue fabric but then I remembered watching a Marklin of Sweden video years ago about making water with just glue and toilet paper which matches the spirit of this project perfectly. I’ll start that tomorrow evening though.

For two days of solid work, I’m very happy with this. It is one of the dumber things I’ve done in a while but I giggle whenever I walk into the room so that alone makes it worth it. I went ahead and ordered the minis from Pendraken too… there’s no way I was going to manage another few months before picking them up.

Another bright(ish) start this morning and the first thing I did was write down what still needs done.

•  Thunderbird 2 hangar door
• Windows for the Round House and the building above the Thunderbird 2 hangar
• Flock the whole thing
• Potted palms
• Palm Trees
• Glue on bushes
• Water round the island

This is just a piece of card board cut to fit the tissue box opening. To the back of that you glue a second piece of card to act as a hinge – as Anthea suggested, I used an old Christmas card for mine. This all then gets covered in scrunched tin foil the same at other parts of the build and painted the same way.

These would have been easier with stickers the right size that you just colour in like they do in the video but I didn’t have any to hand so cut up larger address labels instead. Coloured with a black Sharpie (originally the ones on the Round House were left white but after taking the photo I decided to black them out too).

This is a bit of a spirit of the craft rather than the letter. On Blue Peter they mixed the sawdust into the green paint that they used to give texture. I didn’t have any plain sawdust available and even if I had, I still think I’d take more of a wargamer approach. I painted the model with green paint (as seen yesterday) and then used sawdust flock from Geek Gaming Scenics which I already had in my flock collection. I have two different tones so used a mix of both across the island.

It turned out that one coat of the brown house paint was enough so I dry brushed some burnt umber over the top but by the time I was taking photos, our short Scottish days meant there was only artificial light so there isn’t much to see. I also painted some areas green that are due to get sawdust flock out on them as much a mental reminder to do it than anything else.

Next up was the runway for Thunderbird 2. A simple strip of cereal box, painted black and then dark grey sponged on to stop all the grey I’ve been doing looking the same. The clever sausages at Blue Peter used bits of white sticky label for the runway markings and who am I to argue. I also added the sandpaper for the beach at this point though it isn’t stuck down because there is still some messy stuff to come.

Now the bit I haven’t been looking forward to. Stairs.

In the original video, Anthea Turner says make stairs out of cardboard or bits of wood and they are nice little things. My Tracy Island though is a) bigger and b) for wargaming so my stairs were going to be trickier. I took her suggestion on wood though – I have some 4mm balsa sheet in the cupboard.

First up I did the ones up to the main house. These I curved around to the side to give myself the space for each step to hold two bases. Supports were made out of balsa off-cuts and these will be hidden with bushes.

My Round House has ended up much the same height as the rest of the lower level so it only needed one step to it rather than the set she suggests.

Now we break from the original completely. The infiltrator forces (or the good guys as they are known) need places to land and while there will be rules for scaling the cliffs around the island, and a hidden cave with secret stairs to the upper area (not modelled), an easier stairway was necessary. Coming up from the beach is actually quite a steep climb but I wanted each step to be able to hold a base so they take up a lot of space. To make it work I ended up having to cut into the papier-mâché/foil layers for the top stairs. Once each step was glued together, I took them off and repaired the area so it can get repainted on Sunday. I also had to level off the area around the pool a bit after finishing up the surround for it so by the end of the night it definitely feels a little like I’ve gone backwards!

While paint dried, I set to the next part of the building structures. There are surrounds for the Round House and the swimming pool which are made in the same way:

• Cut shapes out of thick card
• Scrumple up some tin foil and then (gently!) flatten it back out again
• Glue card to foil and wrap it round onto the underside
• (Break from the original instructions for quickness/durability) prime with black spray primer
• Drybrush with Deep Grey and then Ash Grey from the Army Painter Fanatics range.

The swimming pool has an extra wee trick to it. There is a round bit of cereal box card that covers over the yoghurt pot hangar completely. This was meant to be made out of blue card but I just painted it instead. Originally I was going to use hobby paint but then I remembered I had this iridescent blue paint which, after four or five coats, gives a really nice shine that doesn’t really pick up in the photos.

Once dry, this circle is attached to the lower bit of cardboard using a paper fastener/split pin. This has been my only real problem today; I couldn’t find split pins anywhere locally yesterday so ended up paying over the odds to get some sent from Amazon. Big mistake, or should that be tiny mistake? They are half the size of a normal split pin and can’t go through all the layers of card they are meant to! I’ve put one through the water layer and the base layer instead of all three layers. I glued the third layer (swimming pool edge) on top, making sure to keep the glue well clear of the pin head. It is nice it is hidden but I’m not sure how strong it will be longer term.

The buildings got the same two layers of drybrush over a black prime. The wargamer in me wants to keep going and add in extra colours with washes etc but I’ve decided to wait and see how the rest of it comes together first. It is easy enough to go back in afterwards but I’m concerned that too much detailing on them will be incongruous with the rest of the terrain.

Perfectly normal naming conventions are in effect today.

This weekend I have no plans other than some housework so most of my time can be spent on Tracy Island.

I’ve knackered my back the last couple of weeks somehow so I’ve been working with a completely safe modified table. The island is getting its base coats of house paint today but I’ll photograph that when the second coat is dry. Just know that the first step today was the first coat of brown.

Next up is some sponge bushes. These are made from a cheap sponge from a hardware store, torn into little chunks. I used the 10mm models to give an idea of size to begin with but I quickly gave up because it was tedious as all get out to tear sponge that small.

Once they had been torn, the bushes then got soaked in water so they will take the paint better (a trick I learned from a painter and decorator years ago when it comes to rollers but works well in numerous situations).

Now the original video talks about using different shades of green paint so you have different bushes. I went to my cheap crafting paint and pulled out these two to begin with. Watered down a little less than one to one ratio, the sponge bits got tossed in and I used  tongue depressors to squish the paint into them and some tweezers to take them out and onto something to dry out.

I then added a little brown to each tub so there will be four different colours of bushes altogether. I like the bright ones but really felt like the more muted ones are going to help a lot with the final look.

This lot is now all drying and it is on to the next thing.