Tuesday 24 May 2016

Painting Amera's Ruined Tower and Amphitheatre.

Itching to make a start on my Amera plastic I picked out the Amphitheatre and Ruined Tower (as couldn't resist the latter!). This is not so much a tutorial but more a work log, as everything did not go exactly to plan.


One of the fears about Amera pieces can be their lack (or low amount) of texture. A lot of people  have great results with glue and sand, but I discovered I had 2 cans of unused textured spray paints (from a forgotten project years ago), so I thought I experiment with them instead.

The darker capped textured spray has a finer, sand like consistency. I gave the amphitheatre a light dusting of this. I was a bit fearful of obliterating the surface detail.

For the tower I gave the stonework the same dusting, but used the rougher, more foamy stone spray for the ground.

Once the textures had dried it was now for some base colour. I've undercoated stone in black in the past, but didn't want such a dark finish this time, so the stone was undercoated with grey auto primer. The ground was sprayed with a dark brown acrylic

I wasn't too worried about some of the brown getting on the stonework. I adds to the age of the piece.

And the Amphitheatre base coated. Up to this point the whole endeavour had only taken 45 minutes, including grey priming 10 figures and 3 statues (which you will notice littering the work table). In Scotland best take advantage of the lack of rain!

Now I mixed a thin black\brown wash (water and cheap acrylic artist paint). I seem to have made it a bit too watery though. I had intended to add some flow medium ( Johnson's Klear), but couldn't find it, so only water was used.

You can see the effect of the watery mix in the centre of the amphitheatre.

Another effect of this (probably) was the lack of adhesion to the vertical surfaces (even slightly textured). The above photo is after TWO wash applications! I did say this wasn't a tutorial, didn't I??

So I got out a paintbrush and quickly went over the lines in the ruin wall. I didn't bother for the Amphitheatre, being mostly flat it was a bit better.

Once all dry, I stopped gnashing my teeth and drybrushed a few (3 or 4) progressively lighter shades of grey onto the stone work. I did a couple shades of brown onto the ground\mud areas.

Here is the Amphitheatre after it's grey dry-brushes.

And just so you can see the effect of the textured sprays, here is a close up of the wall and ground after the drybrush process.


Next I broke out the flock boxes. I haven't a set of progress shots of this, as it was a flurry of application, correction and tweaking. It's actually quite difficult to stop adding more. I've also added a couple of bushes to sheltered corners.

After a bit of a hum I decided to add a few small areas of growth between the cracks of the amphitheatre slabs. Glad I did.



Both pieces have been given a coat of spray matt varnish.

Pretty happy at the way these have turned out. More to come (after I finish my couple of jobs I interrupted)

10 comments:

  1. Result. Look great. Far better than the price tag on these would suggest.
    I was itching for a new terrain project and not in the mood for paper. This might do me!
    Thanks for posting.

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    1. I know where you are coming from with the paper mood. I've a stalled paper tower sitting around but rushed into this project.

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  2. I find the Amera products pretty good value, but they are what they are and lack that fine detail like you say. Good job on providing your own!
    :-)

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    1. Yup, as you say "They are what they are". But with that in mind they do come up OK. And once the figures are in play the focus is more on them.

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  3. Good job! This has me looking at Amera for cheap options for my chariot racing board. Magi Bayaz and Lancrix the Tall are eagre to investigate these ruins...

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    1. They'll get their chance, don't you worry ;)

      The ruined temple may fit for the centre of the racing board. I have that one as well so I'll have to show you.

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  4. They both look great! Amera is definitely on my list...after we move in the Summer, though.

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    1. Thanks. Good luck with the move. I'm sure you have enough gaming gear to shift without adding to it before the flit. :)

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  5. Good stuff. I have Almera buildings for city fighting, they're fine. And reasonable value.

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    1. I've still to do my Amera ruined buildings. They'll need a bit more work, which is why I hit these.

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