Plinth progress

I've been torn on posting to the blog.  While I'm tempted to share the WIP on my current painting projects, I also want to wait for the great "reveal" for Crystal Brush.  I finally decided on the latter.

But having cleared my calendar of all other hobby activity, that leaves little to post about.  So here's a taste of one of the two projects I'm working on -- the plinth.  Here's where we left off a little while ago.

This is only the second time I've made a proper plinth.  I realized last year, as I paid attention to more shows, either from afar via the Internet or actually participating myself, that a plinth is practically mandatory for a display piece.  That's probably obvious to most competitive painters, but I'm still just starting to dip my toe in the competitive painting scene.

Much like I had to learn to "like" basing as part of painting models for gaming, I'm force-immersing myself in the craft of plinth building.  Like the rest of the hobby, the more you do it, the more it becomes second-nature, and the more you begin to enjoy the process, rather than view it as a chore that is a necessary hurdle to begin actually painting!

So here I covered the foam mouse-ears with Milliput and used rocks and bark to make rock-like impressions.  I experimented with different textures.  I expected the smaller bark chip in the center to show the best results, but it turned out to be different sections on the larger bark piece on the bottom.

You can see I also added some doo-dads on the front of the plinth, to convey a more modern and industrial, or post-apocalyptic, scene.  There's not too much original there, but adding those kinds of items seem pretty much obligatory, as obligatory as the plinth itself.  I will take some credit, though, for the concept of the shards.  I'm sure it's been done out there, but I'm drawing on my childhood imagery of Frank Frazetta illustrations for this idea.

Now I add a layer of sand, followed by real dirt.  This is pretty standard fare, too, a la Massive Voodoo.  They recently showed a whole tutorial on impressing Milliput with different materials.  I had the idea before I saw their post, but they certainly helped validate and fine-tune how I went about it.

Finally, the day I've been waiting for -- to see the piece primed, in order to see it as a unified structure, where I can see the balance and composition that I have in my mind's eye.  I pretty much got what I was going for.

Now we'll airbrush on some base colors and see where it goes from there!