Ishoo Wun-Ateen: Cardboard Cottage

Due to the shift to remote learning, my school has been setting up a whole swathe of new clubs to help our students socialise during lockdown times. One of the new clubs is my Scale Model Club. Since most of the kids have never built a model before, and since most of them don't have any exciting kits or materials, I put together a tutorial on how to build a simple model using only cardboard from packaging, and the sort of basic tools and paint which they are likely to have for art projects. Then I thought why sit on a perfectly good project? Why not get Grot to explain it for his many fans?
So here you are, you lucky people! Apart from the static grass added at the end (and you could skip that!) this whole cottage is made from two different cardboard boxes using nothing but a knife, a pair of scissors, a pen/pencil, a ruler, and some glue. I did use both PVA and Super Glue, but you can just pick one and use it for everything. I did also use two different knives, but either one would have been fine for the whole project. You'll also notice there are more photos than I'd usually use - since this was designed for novice modellers, I went into more detail than I usually would, taking two or three photos were I'd usually only take one.
Anyway, Grot time.

Well, there you have it besieged Hippo Fans! Working entirely in cardboard really took me back to the early days of my terrain career, when I was 13 and my nan gave me the original red How To Make Wargames Terrain book for my birthday. Look out for companion pieces to this coming in future!

Ishoo Wun-Firteen: Planter boxes

Wow! Two ishoos in a day? That hasn't happened in... I think it happened once before...
While I was working on Orkness Station, I had a bit of spare time waiting for PVA to dry just after I carved the chimney. I was looking at the chimney and thinking that it was a good technique I'd like to showcase in a piece somehow - possibly an ancient dome granary, when I realised there was an easier option - plater boxes. Town councils are always trying to pretty up their public spaces, and no matter what time period, planter boxes seem to fit in. So here's a quick and timeless project. Unleash the eco-freindly Grot!

At this point it's also worth denting in some of the bricks with the blunt end of a paint brush - I forgot to get a photo of that stage... You might also want to roll a ball of crumpled tin foil across the surface to roughen it up too.

And there you go! This is a quick, easy and very effective technique. The brick/stone work really stand out at a distance too - I'm sitting across the room from one of these planter boxes (about four meters away) and I can clearly see the individual blocks. This would make a great effect for some sort of ancient and weather beaten building like a witches tower... hmmm... that's got me thinking...

Ishoo Wun-Twelv: Orkness Station.

It's been a while since I last posted an ishoo. That doesn't mean I've been idle, it just means I've been working on projects I didn't think were worth making into tutorials. I've been working away at Orkness - my 40K Ork terrain set for quite some time, but since it uses techniques I've covered, I have not turned any of it into ishoos. Until now. Because I discovered something new.

I was rummaging around in one of the school art store rooms (probably looking for a HB Pencil for a Yr.7 Viscom kid - I spend a lot of time doing that...) when I found something called 'print foam' on a dark and shadowy shelf. What I hear you cry is Print Foam? Well, it's awesome is what it is. It's basically the core from foamcore without the paper. Which means none of that tedious stripping of paper to get to the good carvable foam surface. So naturally I went to the craft shops to hunt it down. And then I built a whole lot of things with it. I even started an Ishoo, but it was really nothing special (just some stone field walls) and I forgot to take photos of the second half of the project. What I needed was something cool to show of this new material. What I needed wa Orkness Station.

Cue the Grot!

Yes, this is out of sequence. I had glued a lot together but it came a bit unglued on the trip to Melbourne. The last three pics were taken at the Hoodlings Hole while six men with fiendish gleams in their eyes played Twilight Imperium in the next room...

The colurful balls all over the place are the ends of dressmaker's pins. I use them to hold things while the PVA dries. 

And there you have it Hippo Fans!

There are actually a few bits and pieces which need a bit of tidy up still, but I wanted to get the ishoo out, so I'm going to fix them up in the morning. I will also try to get some pretty pictures of the recent Orkness projects.

And what is this I see on the horizon? Why it's only the next ishoo arriving hot on the heals of this one!