Making Frostgrave's Harbor: Part II

   This past weekend I was able to finish working on the ships for my Frostgrave waterfront.  I began by base-coating the ships dark brown, and then dry-brushed them with successively lighter coats of a grey-brown mix of paint.  (For part one of this article, see: Making Frostgrave's Harbor: Part I

The small ships with their paint jobs, before I "winterized" them.

The large ship all painted up in it's weathered look before permanently gluing it to its base, and before getting its winter treatment.

     I then applied snow paint and flocking to the bases, and a little to the ships themselves.  I also added a few Water Effects icicles to the ships.

The finished large ship, with the Templar aboard checking out.

A close up of the detail.

The Templar checking out two smaller vessels in the frozen harbor.

Detail shot of one of the smaller ships.

        I'm really pleased with how the ships came out.

     Since the city of Frostgrave is thawing out, I thought it might be fun to add some spots in the harbor where the ice had melted through, and the water was actually visible.  I figured it would be fun to have these areas where folks could push their enemies into the freezing water, or perhaps evil things could emerge.
     While at the local hardware store a couple weeks ago, I picked up a sheet of fluorescent light covering that had a cool crystalline pattern to it.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it at the time, but I thought it might work perfectly for this project.  I actually ended up using it to make the water portion, instead of ice, because when you painted the underside, the texture made it look like rippling water.  I began by cutting out a roughly oval section of the sheet.

Painting a "hole" on the underside of the plastic sheet.

I wasn't sure how I was going to do the surrounding snow, so at this point I masked the "hole" and sprayed the sheet white.

In the end, I decided to use some white felt to represent the snow, as that was what I was going to use for the harbor anyway.  I applied a small ring of Water Effects around the hole to represent the edge of the ice, and then I glued the felt over the plastic sheet to be the snow.

   Next up, I will be building the ruined dock along the city's edge, so stay tuned for Part III.