The Empire

[Zephyrus52246]

The rock molds use two chemicals that form a plastic rock.  It's flexible for a while after you initially make them, so they can be bent around the scenery and hot glued as well.  This worked well, but I'll probably have some hydrocal rocks as well.  You can see the town and it's styrofoam base is gone, as the benchwork is 4 feet deep here and it'd be near impossible to do this without a hole in the benchwork.  You can see the basic form for the "bluff" that the train tunnel goes through.  Short enough to separate the scenes, without the train disappearing for a great length of time.  There will be an access hole in the side, for track and derailment access.  It's taking a long time as I put up a couple of castings and wait a day or so to see where the next one goes.  Al these rocks are from just 3 molds.  Two of them ( in the center of the picture) are nearly two feet long.  I had an issue with painting them, I've just stained hydrocal rocks without much issue, but that doesn't work on plastic.  Bragdon suggests using gouche to cover them.  The liquid gouche he uses in the sample kit was too thick, I found some Krylon spray gouche that works well.  The stains go on well, but using black thinned paint or A&I made the rocks a bit too dark.  I tried overpainting this with white stain, but that didn't look good, either.  A dry brushing worked better, and I even used some Pan pastels which seemed to work well.  We'll see how it works when I paint them in place. 


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

Thanks, Tom.  The bluff is almost too vertical for trees.  I'm presently trying to figure out how to cover them.  Maybe some Woodland Scenics clump foliage, maybe Supertrees.  I'll experiment with that once I get the rest of the rocks in place and some ground goop for a base. 


Jeff

[PRR Modeler]

Everything looks wonderful. I really like both the city and the mountain you built. You also have me thinking about doing a tunnel

[ACL1504]

Thanks, Tom.  The bluff is almost too vertical for trees.  I'm presently trying to figure out how to cover them.  Maybe some Woodland Scenics clump foliage, maybe Supertrees.  I'll experiment with that once I get the rest of the rocks in place and some ground goop for a base. 


Jeff

Jeff,

I see that now that I look more closely at the mountain. Howard Zane used  WS clump foliage for his vertical mountains.

Tom

[Jim Donovan]

Looks like I 'found' a new thread to follow. Great work Jeff. I have caught up on the 'new' part, now need to go back to the original thread.

Jim D

[Zephyrus52246]

Thanks for following, guys.  Thanks, Tom for the Zane pics.  The foliage on the vertical sides is kinda what I'm trying to do.  Oddly I had no WS Clump Foliage here (until some arrived yesterday).  I think it will work well.  I used some Sculptamold in between the castings.  It kinda looks like rock if you don't smooth it out.  I needed to wrap the tunnel portal in Saran Wrap to put the sculptamold around it. 


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

I used "Ground Goop", a concoction of vermiculite, Celluclay, Elmer's Glue, and Latex paint (with a capful of lysol to prevent mold growth).  With my latex paint color, it looks like something that rhymes with goop.  I use a darker brown than my dirt color, so I can make sure I've covered the entire area with dirt.  I apply it with these palate knives, and my fingers (wear disposable gloves).  It sticks to the surfaces better than the Sculpatmold, as it's very sticky.  You can make grooves in it to show erosion, though I doubt the shallow ones I made will show after there's ground cover and foliage on the sides. 


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

This section took nearly two hours to do with making the sculptamold, applying it carefully around the rocks, and cleaning up the mess.   The white over spray is from the Krylon Spray on gesso, as most of the rocks were applied right after making them while they were still malleable. Speaking of mess, you don't want to just put this stuff down the drain.  So I take off as much as possible with paper towels from the tools, mixing bowl, etc.  I used to hate mixing it up and it's very thick and hard to stir.  I bought my own stand mixer on Amazon to do this, and now it's MUCH easier.  Still some to cover, maybe later, as my arm gets tired from working this stuff.  Then it'll be time to color the rocks.  Then the foliage.  Maybe by Christmas I'll be done (don't quote me on what year).   


Jeff

[deemery]

I have a wallboard bucket that I keep in the train room as a dumping place for all the scenery fluids and scraps....  Beats pouring that stuff down the drain!


dave

[jbvb]

You especially don't want to put scenery cleanup water into a septic system.  I always clean outside with a hose, regardless of season.

[Zephyrus52246]

Well, it's been a month.  I completed putting on all the ground goop.  I could work at it an hour or so at a time until my hands/arms got tired.  It's like spreading very thick peanut butter.  That and maneuvering it around the castings took about 8 hours total. 


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

On scraps I tried many ways to paint the castings.  Some are plaster, some are the plastic Bragdon type.  Most plaster coloring videos use the raw plaster as a base.  I've done that a time or two before with good results, but here, they wouldn't match.  Bragdon suggests covering them with Gesso.  I used the liquid gesso in the sample he sent me, but it was too thick and tended to cover the rock detail.  I found some Krylon spray gesso which worked well.  Next Bragdon uses black tempra brushed liberally into the nooks and crannies, then spraying it with water and rubbing the tempra off the rock faces.  This looked OK, but the rocks got too dark, I thought.  I tried starting with A&I, but this didn't really take on the gesso, though better on the plaster castings than the plastic ones.  I decided the tempra was the way to go, and the rocks on the left here have that.


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

Finally, I tried thinned acrylics, but they got into the nooks and crannies and then you lost the dark crevices.  So I decided to use Pan Pastels.  This seemed to work, though this rock is a bit darker than I'd like, probably as it took up more of the A&I for some reason.  I'll do the next rocks up next. 


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

I've been slowly working on the rock castings.  The sequence for painting is start with the gesso, then the tempra.  Spray the tempra liberally with water.  Towel off the surfaces.  Then I use a china brush with the bristles cut to about 1/2 inch to scrape more of the tempra off the surface.  Then drybrush with white.  Let dry.  I usually do this a couple of times, letting it sit, as I think it's too white when it goes on.  Doing the dry brush white seems to take off some of the tempra, making some of the dry brushing a light grey.  Then apply Pan pastels.  Light grey, white, raw umber and yellow ochre. Then seal with matte fixative.  Then more dry brushing of white over this, usually at least twice.  Some vertical strokes to catch the edges of the rocks to highlight them, then some lateral to have the rock faces themselves lighten a bit.  Reapply some pan pastels if needed.  Use back A&I if some rock details don't have enough black in the cracks, then again some white gently drybrushed over the faces.  Still a little darker than I'd like, but I can live with this.  The yellow ochre isn't quite so stand out on the layout, must be the camera (or the photographer).

Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

Here's the next section finished (I think), and the next section with just the Tempra.  You can see how dark it is, that's why it takes so much dry brushing to lighten it up.  The rubbing with the cloth to remove some of it can break off small pieces on the plastic moldings.  These get painted with grey acrylic to cover them.

Jeff