‘nids part 86 – Tyranid Bastion growth pt7.

In some respects I feel disappointed that I'm not sharing the following pictures 'live' so to speak. This is six nights continuous work. I cracked open the white DAS and just thought I'd see what happened. and as time went on I got better at it. Using my trusty sculpting tool I just scored some horizontal 'biomechanical' ridges and although it's not perfection by any stretch the clumsy nature of my sculpting does have a certain 'alien growth' feel to it. Day 1 aw me sculpt the left tower and for fear of ruining what I'd done I left it to dry overnight. Automatically that gives me a timescale of 8 days which is why I dropped all the other projects, although given it took around an hour to do I could easily have swapped to the vault or Tac Squad when this was done but I was a bit drained by the whole procedure. The second tower was Day 2, with an emplaced weapon slit, which I'd foolishly forgotten to add on the first tower, I wonder how difficult that will be.

Anywhere, I'd sanded the grout too much was quite flexible as I tried to sculpt the clay but it was only a minor irritant. Additionally the surface was still quite dusty, although you couldn't tell to touch but the DAS did struggle to stick. I don't know why adding water on the outside makes it stick but it does help. Maybe the clay is ultra-porous and it wicks through to help slick it up and stick to the base. I also found adding in chunks and then working them together helpful. I prepped a whole wall before I sculpted and think given the surface area you would struggle with Milliput to do this. I'm sure it'd start to go off before you got to this stage whereas a quick wipe over with water breathes life into the clay.

Here's where I shave off a day. Given these two inner walls a quite small and fiddly anyway I was prepared to gamble smudging the sculpt by doing two at once. I didn't expect them to be great so I could afford a mistake or two.

Day 4 and I treated the right tower as a single unit also, sculpting both sides of the emplaced weapon in one go. The following night I thought I could do the same on the big tower. 

With all my experience so far and growing confidence but it was a little too much and I left it with some of the elements sculpted hoping I could join them up without too much fuss.

I also filled out some of the inner battlements and Capillary towers just because I'd snagged my rubber gloves on exposed support pins a couple of times and to use up clay that had been out in the air for a bit.

Lastly I added on the forgotten emplaced weapon port - easy peasy and the remaining wall was finished off and I was able to blend it in with few problems. I'm concerned that the emplaced weapon ports are a bit bland, perhaps they could have done with a bit of texture?

I'm pretty much sculpting on the fly here, I'd intended to frame each wall [which will be bonewhite with a red flesh lining and my usual blue/turquoise chitin plate but I seem to have dropped fleshy bits on the walls which leaves the areas intended to take the fleshy bits quite plain. I also need to get my head round the Tervigon belly-esque flesh bits that will be growing out of the base...