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By JUXTIMON - Dec. 31, 1969 Building concept.This tower belongs to a complex of abandoned buildings set on raised squares around a courtyard. Abandoned buildings have a lot more mystery to them than ruins, its quite easy to work out how a building became ruined, but why would a whole settlement be abandoned? Many children’s fantasies are based around the derelict abandoned buildings in their neighbourhoods, and the mind can come up with a thousand different stories leading upto the departure of its previous occupiers. Were the occupiers arrested and taken away? Did they flee from monsters? Was it a curse? Did the local supplies dry up? Did the nearby river dry up? Was the city infected by plague? This is the idea I like to use. 3 or 4 years ago the citizens of my town were struck down by a terrible plague, many of them died within days of contracting the disease, or wandered off into the wilderness so as not to infect others. As more and more people left, there weren’t enough people to look after the buildings and stop mother nature from reclaiming her land. Rumour has it that some of the poor unfortunates have survived to this day and can be seen stumbling from shadow to shadow. About the model. First things first, I’m only 2 months into my Hirst Arts obsession (my first molds arrived on june 20th 2006) and what at first seemed like an easy pastime proved to be a much much harder and more involved passion for its followers. Building this- my first model, has been a massive learning curve and I have nothing but the upmost respect and admiration for anyone who can take an idea for a building in their head, and then turn it into a finished piece. I imagine that on first inspection, this looks to be a standard bell tower model, made following the standard instructions with the advised blocks. But I like to think I have been able to offer an alternate vision of what a bell tower should look like- in reality, my tower bears little resemblance to the instructions, and hopefully the differences I have made will talk for themselves. As stated above, this was a massive learning curve for me. I suffered problems with adhesive choice, settlement(seriously, my foundations weren’t deep enough and the tower started to lean, so I excavated the base and built foundations all the way down to the wood) and the general trials and misfortunes of anyone new to a hobby. But in the end, I couldn’t be happier with the final model. Materials used are: Crystacal R plaster, handmade coconut fibre paper, expanded polystyrene, balsa wood, brass tubing and galvanised aluminium rod (for the lightning conductor), acetate, cardboard, wooden shelf (for the base), a variety of flocking/basing materials, and an awful lot of spray body filler. Molds used: Wizard's Tower Mold #50 Bridge Mold #53 Gothic Church Mold #54 Bell Tower Mold #55 Tomb Mold #56 Floor Tile Mold #201 Dimensions: width 12”, length 22”, height 18”. Total number of blocks used: 1412 Not too many blocks were customised- the decorative curls at the end of the top arches were all sanded in half. On the sloped walls leading up to the tower I had to sand a slope onto a basic block and make up a mold from it (the sloped block of this size is actually available on a different mold which I don’t own) I also made a mold of my decorative trim block so I wouldn’t have to cast 55 of them individually. I decided to paint the model in a different way to many HA builds that I’ve seen, I purposefully haven’t used drybrushing anywhere. The model was undercoated with orange/yellow spray body filler (for both its texture and for the warm undertones from the paint). The basecoat is multiple coats of thinned acrylics mixed to the same colour as a corrugated cardboard box, and then a series of GW washes were applied in desired places. The only highlighting was a delicate misting of white paint through a diffuser. I then applied all the basing materials in the standard way. The soil layer under the grass is a sheet of coconut-fibre paper, this is a highly textured handmade paper, which with a little shading here and there looks just like soil. Finally, a big thank you to everyone on the forum for answering my questions along the way, and to Imahilus for suggesting I enter this in the HADD. enough waffle and on to the pictures.
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