Friday 30 November 2012

Scenery Workshop: Rocks!

So you want to build some rocky scenery?

Well now is your chance! Here's how!

1) Go to a hobby store and pay two to three times more than you're comfortable with for some sheets of foamboard.

2) Keep your clippers to hand in case of a cat attack.

3) Using a very sharp modelling knife, cut the foamboard into a pleasing shape, making sure the edges slope outwards.

4) In a crazed moment, decide to make six more similar pieces.


5) Buy a slab of insulation foam or sweet talk a builder to get some.

6) Assure the builder that it was purely about building some scenery. You don't want to start anything with him.

7) Cut a chunk of foam off the slab roughly the size of your first rock.

8) Try unsuccessfully to convince a family member it is a delicious piece of cheese.

9) Start to cut chunks out of the block to make it more naturally rocky-looking.

10) If your knife gets tired, lean it against the foam.


11) Cut up a whole load of rocks in the same way and glue them to your bases using wood glue.

12) Wait far longer than it says on the glue bottle for the glue to dry.

13) Rest knife.



14) In another mad moment, cut some of the rocks into preposterously unlikely shapes that would never really occur in nature.

15) Start to realise you've made too many scenery pieces. Question where the hell you're going to keep them all.

16) Reassure wife/girlfriend/builder that this scenery is vital to the continued existence of the universe.

17) Ensure tape measure is to hand but don't actually use it.


18) Get bored of making scenery.

19) Spend several weeks doing other projects.

20) Fend off complaints from wife/girlfriend/builder about the pointless waste of space your rocks are.

21) Agree to at least get them finished and play one game with them before you throw them in the trash.

22) Spray paint the rocks black.

23) Realise that spray paint doesn't work on foam.

24) Paint the rocks black using a brush.

25) Pause half way through to read about family fun at a messy church and to learn about the life of Muriel Spark.

(whoever she is)


26) Wet-brush the rocks brown.

27) Compare them to some rocks you made earlier.

28) Realise that rocks don't really come in such weird shapes.

29) Lay out some daemon models just in case.

30) Mix up a delicious looking beverage in your water pot.


31) Don't drink the beverage.

32) Paint round the bases and sprinkle bird grit on then paint over that.

33) Throw up if you did drink the beverage.

34) Wash out mouth.

35) Gargle.

36) Dry face and hands.

37) Finish painting rocks brown.


38) Use cream paint to slightly-less-wet-brush the rocks.

39) Realise that the old rocks look different from the new rocks.

40) Repaint the old rocks to match them up.

41) Lay the rocks out in a pleasing pattern.

42) Try to come up with some realistic-sounding (but still false) reasons why rocks would be sticking up in the air like that for when people ask.

43) Rest knife.

44) Go and watch TV with builder.


2 comments:

  1. these rocks occur at Brimham Rocks and could have been caused by a glacier cutting through the land

    ReplyDelete