So. Saturday’s event at Galactic Force Games, which is an unflinchingly superlative store if ever you could find one in the greater Chicagoland area, came and went in a flash of hobby glory. Thank you very much, Andy for a tremendous afternoon.
I will be writing a bit more on the events of the afternoon when I have gathered my notes. In the mean time, I would like to revisit all the prep from my end last week. As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up the tables last Sunday from Matt’s house. The table itself is extremely well-constructed, but it had taken a beating during the 100+ demo games the Hyacinth team ran during AdeptiCon, and I was charged with “freshening it up a bit.”
I can do that.
… but with less than on full week until the actual event, well, it was always going to be an interesting challenge.
So, once I had made the rocks a bit more rocky and the grit a bit more gritty, I doused the whole thing in a generous portion of wood glue to make sure it was solid and strong.
After a night of drying (precious, precious time), I re-applied an equally generous slathering of a “scorched brown” house paint equivalent. Drying time, again, was pressing on my mind. I had decided to redo the water effect, which meant that all painting had to be finished by the Thursday night. And so these necessary pauses were rather brutal to endure. I found myself tapping my fingers on tables quite a lot last week.
Thankfully, Wednesday was relatively wide open for me. Once the base was dry, I had to work very, very quickly. The photos jump quite dramatically here, however, as I was forced to work-work-work without pause for neither bread nor water nor frivolous photography. I exaggerate.
My main task was to lighten the look a bit, make it all more dusty and worn. To accomplish this, I worked toward a “bone white” equivalent (house paint again) until the brown was nearly lost completely. I then hit this is a wild wash of artist’s inks (drying time!) in order to give the white complexity and visual interest. I allowed the ink to run around all over the place and wash it with deliberate unevenness in both color and intensity –hither and thither. When dry (ah!), I came back with an extremely dry brush of that white again. The ink textures folded underneath that highlight so that the whole thing remained cohesive but still subtly interesting somewhere beneath it all.
In the rockiest valley areas, I was a bit more aggressive with the dry-brush so that the exposed rock face felt more chalky and sun-kissed. And so on.
And that brought me face-first into Thursday night for the biggest gamble of the whole project: water effect.
More on that next time.