Easy Styro Ruins

Jenn (the wife) and I have been gearing up for Pulp Alley more and as part of our pile up, she wanted some ruins. One of the easiest ways to do big old ruins is to get creative with some styro board. The thinner insulation board, 1/2" I thin, are perfect for it.

We started by going around the straight edges of the board and marking out some ruins corner sections and low walls. For the corners you cut the negative out as well and then you can match up the corner pieces later in what arrangement you want. We found it was useful to mark out some simple stone arrangements in pen.

While we originally planned to go through and score the styro with a pencil, I didn't like the effect and took a bit of extra time going through and scoring and detailing the pieces with an exacto. This produced deeper, more distinct lines and allowed me to cut in all sorts of irregularities and character.

After the walls were cut out, grooved and glued to thick card bases, Jenn and I gave them a good, heavy painting with black acrylic hobby paint and let them set to dry.

Step two in painting process was to go over and drybrush and stipple in a good amount of a medium brown color, making sure not to cover all the black paint.

Over this we stippled in a medium grew color, making sure not to cover all the brown. After this had dried, we added some white to the grey lightening it up and then drybrushed this lightly over the grey, trying to catch most of it on the highest points. The end result is a nice complex set of shades that shows the highlights of stony form nicely.

What is shown above is only half of what we have managed to create in only a couple hours of work. The cutting is what took the longest. the drybrushing was done really fast and only really waiting for the paint to be touch dry. After the pieces are all painted, we're going to set to detailing them.

Stay tuned...

-Eli