Getting in the Christmas Spirit 2: Rock On

The Next Day: My supply haul: A 4 x 8 sheet of 2-inch pink foam, a 2 x 4 foot sheet of 5mm underlayment, two tubes of adhesive and a tub of lightweight spackle. I cut the foam into smaller sections in the parking lot at Lowe's so I could get it in my car.

The festivities begin tomorrow morning.

Day 1 of the build:

Here's the first day's progress. There will be one more layer of 2 inch foam on the bottom, and at least another 2 inches added to the mesa on the right, probably 4 inches.

The first two layers above track level are pretty monotonous. As I worked upward, I got more aggressive with my carving and the results are better. I'll probably go back tomorrow and rework those two layers for more variety. I notched out layer 3 between the two buttes and I like that it breaks up the monotony. I may remove part of  layer 2 on the left side, so the butte starts lower, which will make it look taller.

I mentioned carving. I started out doing deliberate carving on the bottom layers, but I pretty quickly discovered what works best is more of a chipping action -- insert a utility knife into the foam at different angles, and pry or twist to break away a chunk of foam. This looks more like broken rock. Then I used Dave Meeks' suggestion of using a small wire brush to add fine strata, brushing mostly horizontally. I found a steel brush was too aggressive, but a brass one was about right, followed by cleanup with a nylon bristle brush.

Day 2. I went back and reshaped the foam and I think it looks a lot better. Kind of Flintstones at this point, but when I paint it and  add a tunnel portal and trestle, I think it will be better.

A little later, I've begun to apply spackle, filling the gaps between layers. The upper section is removable so I can lay track later.

After spending most of the day working in the back yard carving foam and applying spackle, I spent a couple of hours this evening cutting ties from 1/8 square strip wood and built the first of two trestle bents. It will be a couple more days until I finish the rockwork, but when that's done, I'll be ready to install the trestle and start laying track.

Day 3:

Did a little more carving this morning, filled some more gaps with spackle, then painted. I first put on a coat of the same tan (Behr Practical Tan) that I used for the Frazier Borate, just because I had it and wasn't going to use it for anything else. You can see some of it in the picture below. Then I went back to Home Depot for more paint.

Dave suggests using three different tints (intensities) of the same hue (base color). He buys a big can of raw sienna and mixes some of it with white to produce three different tints. I don't need a lot of paint for this small layout, so I picked one of those color cards from the paint department that gave several tints of the same red-brown hue, and had them mix sample-size jars of three of those tints: Mexican Moonlight, Sweet Peach, and Honeysweet. 

Dave recommends starting with the middle tint, so I applied Sweet Peach over the tan. It seemed a little gloppy in places, so next time I'll thin it some. In this case, I hit the worst spots with a spray of water. Now it needs to dry, probably overnight, before I proceed. This color looks pretty Pepto Pink in person, though not so bad in the photo.

I'm planning to add a fascia along the bottom two inches all the way around, and higher on the tunnel end -- the part that's painted tan in the photos.  The little inset at the bottom, right of center in the picture above, is where the electric hookup will go, along with a switch for the lights, and maybe a simple control for the train.

The tan bit near the center in this photo, just below track level, is going to be a retaining wall.

Day 4:

I gave everything a black wash, then test painted the hoodoos with my darker and lighter tints. Overall, it just looked too pale. 

I set aside the lightest color and went back and got the next darker tint, Cinnabar. So instead of starting with the middle tint as the base coat and working lighter and darker, I ended up starting with what is now the lightest, and layered on successively darker tints. The idea is not to fully cover the base coat, but let it show through to varying degrees. Then I went back and drybrushed with lighter and darker colors. After that dried, I gave it another wash of dilute black.

Just an interesting tidbit: I would normally use flat or ultra-flat paint, but when I went to Home Depot this time they only had sample size jars in Satin, which has more of a sheen than flat. I went ahead and got that, thinking I might have to give the whole thing a coat of matte medium or a clear flat spray of some kind. As it turns out, the flat black wash does a pretty good job of killing the sheen, especially on the lighter colors. There's still a bit of noticeable sheen on the darker rocks, but I kind of like it: It reminds me of the "desert varnish" that sometimes forms on rocks in the desert southwest. I'd still go with flat for the Lockwood & San Emigdio, but in this case, I think a little gloss is actually a good thing.

There are still one one or two things I want to fix, but I'm pretty happy with this. I stopped and picked up ingredients for Dave Meek's snow mixture this afternoon, so maybe tomorrow....

And that whole knock it out in a weekend thing? Not even close. But I'm having fun and learning some new techniques, so it's all good. I still hope to have it done by Christmas.