Bracken Court; Portal to The Gloaming
This is a blog entry discussing the printing and painting of a piece of 3D printed terrain scenery. Hey there! So, let’s dive into this blog post about sprucing up some 3D-printed terrain.
Bracken Court is part of the Gloaming Swamps collection by the talented Johnny Fraser-Allen. This guy’s work deserves way more spotlight especially considering his resume shows he knows how to work with Hollwood.
Bracken Court itself is a versatile gem. It’s a four-part sculpture that can either morph into a majestic dragon or serve as standalone terrain for your tabletop adventures.
While I would have wished for some sort of locking or slotting mechanism, can’t win ‘em all - I decided to “PLA Weld”the whole piece together permanently - no regrets there. I did make attempts at magnetizing the dragon’s head - bit of a comedy of errors. Note to self: soldering irons can denature neodymium magnets.
Scaling it down to 75% seemed like a good call, though maybe 80% would’ve been even better for accommodating larger D&D dice. Not so much a “lesson learned” as much as advice to the reader.
The included supported versions worked fine - sadly for the first three quarters of the project I tried to use tree supports generated by Cura. I will save you the tedious support removal saga - other than saying it was especially unpleasant around the antlers.
I tried to do a black and then grey zenithal prime, but, the Vallejo Grey Primer fought tooth and nail to stay in the airbrush nozzle. As I edit this document, I recall that I’ve had this problem before and swore to myself I would not use this particular bottle ever again. Molotow paints and acrylic inks are pure magic - they went down the nozzle as quickly as Ben and Jerry’s goes down my gullet.
I got my zenithal highlight using white acrylic ink, frosted the tips of the dragon’s antlers with Molotow Future Green and picked out a bunch of Vines with the same green. Then I went over all the woodwork with burnt umber leaving some black some white and some green visible. I filled in the eyes with purple then hit the eyes with red ink and did the same for the mushrooms as well as base coating (or undercoating?) the brickwork with blue.
With the base colors laid down, it was dry brushing time. Orange and brown craft paint acrylics came to the rescue, giving the wood a vibrant, lifelike feel. Blue bricks got a gray makeover, mushrooms turned a charming shade of red, and the whole thing started looking like a work of art.
Dry brushing over airbrushing turned out to be a game-changer. Quick, easy, and surprisingly fun – count me in for more of that.
And can we talk about how much of a time-saver airbrushing is for that dreaded base coat? Seriously, it’s a miniature painting revelation.
Oh, and a quick shoutout to my Poundland makeup brush for its stellar dry brushing performance. I have struggled with the makeup brush, or Artis Opus approach for awhile. The key may have been that I need to learn to vary how hard I press the brush onto the surface. While it’s obvious you shouldn’t be jamming the thing in, paying attention to how lightly or strongly your pressing on the model is not something anyone is ever mentioned to me I’ve had to learn this lesson myself the hard way.
So yeah, in a nutshell, Bracken Court was a blast to paint. I’m itching to do more, but duty calls with a mix of work and travel on the horizon. Still, knowing I can paint these babies quicker than I can print them? Priceless.
