Cutom Blood Bowl Pitch

Ok, so I've been away from the blogosphere for a while. Life's been busy, have a baby on the way (a boy, future gamer, due in only a few weeks). After a hellish Monday I don't really have the energy to do any productive assembly or painting, so I figured I'd sit on my lazy but in front of the TV and show off some of what I've accomplished in the last several months.

First installment, the blood bowl pitch. I put this together as a project to learn how to use the airbrush I received as a birthday present from my wife and family. I've also been debating converting myself up a Skaven team using a cheap battleforce I picked up a few months back.

It started off as an appropriately sized piece of pink insulation foam, painted and textured like you would a model's base or a gaming table. Painted brown, and drybrushed in slightly lighter shades. Once this was done, white glue was used to glue on a few types of static grass I had lying around the house. This was fairly heavily shallacked to protect it from the rigors of gaming (and the remainder of the assembly).

Once I had the basic block of dirt and grass completed, it came time for the airbrush. The overall pitch borders, centerlines, and other major lines were taped off using masking tape (thus why the shallacking was so important), and sprayed with the airbrush to create the lines. I actually found that sticking the tape to a wall or my pant leg prior to sticking it to the pitch removed some of the adhesive and kept it from tearing away the static grass on the gaming table.

I liked the look of the airbrushed lines, as spraying it on with the airbrush made it look like the painted lines on an actual playing field. The biggest challenge was the gridmarkers. Those were created by drawing the grid pattern on a piece of cardboard and cutting out cross-shapes at each point in the grid. This template (mine was about 12x12in square) was then used with the airbrush to create the repeating pattern.

The half/reroll markers were painted as normal with a normal brush and GW foundation paints. The scoreboard (still in work in progress) and dugouts were assembled from popsicle sticks and dowels, using a hot-glue gun.

And finally, the pictures:





I will update again when the scoreboard is finished. I am debating painting some sort of emblem in the center of the playing field.