Collapsed Arches

The Collapsed Arches piece was a test of a new hot wire cutter that I had recently purchased and also to use up some polystyrene that I had lying around my work room.

After quick sketch of what I wanted to make, I was able to make to decide on the size and scale of the piece and I also wanted to make sure that pieces of the collapsed arches actually do fit together if they where put together somehow, as I felt this would improve the look of the piece.

I used a ¾ inch thick sheet of polystyrene and drew the plans onto it and cut the out the shapes with the hot wire cutter and added the groves by just making the hot wire cutter touch the polystyrene to burn the grove to created the look of great blocks of stone set on top of each other. Having cutting the arch pieces out, I laid them out onto a sheet of hardboard and drew an outline for the base of the collapsed arches and cut it out and sanded down the edges.

It was now the time to glue down the collapsed arches pieces onto the base, I arranged the pieces on the base in a way that look realistic and pleasing. Then secured them onto the base with PVA glue and allowed it to dry. Once the glue dried I coated the collapsed arch pieces with a mixture of PVA glue and ready mixed filler (textured paint would also work) and set it aside to dry.

When the PVA and filler coating was dried, I painted PVA glue around the collapsed arches and glued down a lot of small stones to represent smaller pieces of rubble.

Once the glue of the smaller rocks had dried, it was time to paint the piece, first of all I gave the model a base coat of dark grey and then simply built up layers of lighter grey with a final highlight of white on the more exposed edges of the arches, then the base was painted green and allowed to dry, when the paint was dry it was time to add flock to the base and to also add flock to areas of the collapsed arches to represent lichen and moss which would hopefully age the piece and make it look like the collapsed arches have been around in this state of disrepair for a long time.

The flock was added by simply painting PVA glue onto the base as well as onto and around the stonework and then coated the glued area in flock and leaving it to dry before dusting

As for the test, well I'm happy with the results and it looks good on the gaming table.