Tag: archive

Building a Bunker

This one is gonna be an older project. It was shared back when I was still on miniatures.photography (a now defunct pixelfed instance) and was the first piece of terrain I ever scratch-built. It was a simple bunker constructed using foam-core and cardboard. The construction was fairly simple and straightforward, consisting of four trapezoidal pieces of foamcore (two for the ends, and two internal ones for rigidity), and then three rectangular pieces to form the top and sides. Hot glue was used to then attach the sides and top of the structure.

I then added details using some cardboard (2.4mm thick ‘box board’ sourced from an art supplies store, though if I did this again I’d use something slightly thinner because it was a pain to cut). I also used a few bits of plastic mesh to add grates to the top of the bunker, with the area under the grates being pre-painted in black before the grates went in. Some 3d printed greebles I had lying around were added, as well as a few cut up pieces of zip tie. The cardboard was mostly attached using PVA, with superglue used for the greebles.

Lastly, a second pass of detailing was applied using some thinner cardboard salvaged from an old cereal box. This added a bit more depth to many of the panels, with the aim being for that to show up well when dry-brushed later.

After this I coated the piece in modpodge before I undercoated it with some black spray undercoat from the local “Hammerbarn”1. I did this before realizing I really ought to attach it to a base, I went back and cut an MDF base for the piece, which I glued on aLastlynd textured with spackle, pebbles and sand before spraying it again.

Lastly, it was time to give it a simple paint-job. Since this is a terrain piece I used some simple craft paints. For the base coat I used a mixture of Paynes Grey and blue to get a dark, de-saturated blue. This was then overbrushed2 with a brighter de-saturated blue and washed with a simple black wash before being dry-brushed with a light grey-blue.

The grates at the top received a similar treatment with shades of grey, with a metallic silver being used for the dry brush and a little weathering using burnt umber and raw umber to add some rust.

Overall, pretty happy with this – it looks nice on the tabletop – just need to build quite a few more. The dark browns of the dirt make me think of jungles so I may have to see if I can “jungle it up” for whatever I build next for this set and try to aim for a forest moon of Endor kind of a vibe.

  1. Ok, so it’s actually Bunnings. But I couldn’t resist the Bluey reference. ↩︎
  2. and the grating on the top has patches of brown rust.Overbrushing is a simple technique is similar to drybrushing, but with much heavier coverage ↩︎

A Useful Little Workstation

Back in November of 2022, I was just recently migrated off Twitter to Mastodon and was starting to learn about the rest of the Fediverse. Someone called Ari was just starting up a Pixelfed instance for mini-painting called, appropriately, miniature.photography.

My first post on the site was sharing my new portable hobby station. Just a simple MDF kit, but also spray painted to give it extra protection.

An mdf hobby station, fully assembled and painted gray. It looks shiny and new.

I put this together to make it easier to make good use of the rather small amount of hobby time I got (having a young family sure does kill most of your free time). It has its dedicated spot on the shelf which makes setup and pack-up relatively quick and easy.

That station is still with me today, though it now looks a little less immaculate. But it’s served me well so far. One of the minis is even the same in both pictures (for fun, see if you can spot which). I do tend to take a meandering approach to getting figures painted.

The same mdf hobby station, but showing clear evidence of paint spillage and other wear and tear.

Since then, Ari eventually decided that running an instance wasn’t for him. He’s given us all plenty of notice, so I figured it’d be a good idea to migrate some of the stuff I’d posted over there to this blog before the instance goes. You’ll probably see a few more posts where I go back and discuss old projects so I can ensure some of those photos remain available somewhere.

And thank you to Ari. Miniature.photography was my place to share my projects with others for quite a few years, and led to me discovering many other talented painters to follow within the wider hobby corner of Mastodon (frequently simply shortened to Hobbyodon). I could talk more about how wonderful it’s been, for now I’ll share a blog post from someone else whose captured it wonderfully.