Experiments with Rubble Paste; Rubble and Scatter Terrain - Part 2

When we left off, it was now July (natural light in pictures, my word!), and we had a bunch of scenery on fairly sparse looking bases, so I decided to try and make some rubble paste. As with many things I attempt, I had a vague recollection of having seen a tutorial on Youtube at some point in the past, and so winged it based on what little (potentially not the important bits) that I could remember and hoped for the best.

One of the things I remembered from the video that I'd seen was that they used crushed eggshell to add some erratic not-just-sand shapes to the rubble, so I dutifully set about saving some. Warning - no matter how much I cleaned them, the plastic tub I was keeping them in was very, very stinky when I came to use them, so this isn't for the squeamish!

So, I cleaned them again. And again.

Then dug out the mixing bowl that has been used to make textured paint enough times that it is ruined for any other use:

And set about crushing the eggshell into irregularly sized pieces:

Then bulked up using a blend of sand, grit and cork pieces:

I then mixed it all up, with some PVA to bind it all. At this point it looked like the world's least appealing breakfast cereal:

I also added some plaster at this point, to bulk it up even further. In hindsight, I would probably reduce how much I added (or skip it entirely) as it softened some of the lumps and bumps, but not so much so that I felt compelled to rip it all of and start again!

Then I added some black paint, before adding some extra larger cork pieces for seasoning:

Then it was just a case of bodging it onto the bases using a coffee stirrer to jam it into all the nooks and crannies:

Repeat for each piece:

And here's how it looked once it had dried:

I was beginning to suspect that I had added too much filler to the mix, but figured that it looked alright here, and would hopefully drybrush nicely when it came to time to paint!

Then it was just a case of sanding the rest of the bases:

Here's everything drying post sand application:

At least a couple of those miniatures at the front have since been finished and posted, which makes a nice change from most of these old WIP pictures!

I then spray undercoated all of the terrain grey, as usual, and then that was about it for the next six months...

Tune in next time for what is hopefully the final stretch...