How to make a display board in 7 days

Or alternate title:

How to not freak out when your brother asks you to make him a display board at the last week before the event!

As the alternate title suggests, my brother and I are getting ready for this weekend's Harvester of Souls 40k tournament in Spokane Valley, WA. I already have my display board and army prepared.  My brother, however, is running a little behind on getting his army ready. So about a week before the event, he calls me up and asks me to make him a display board, nothing too fancy, but something to center his army. I agreed because his birthday is coming up soon, and this can be part of it.

I thought about it a little. Jarom's ork army is pretty much 100% vehicles and bikes. Going for a Mad Max Fury Road theme. So I wanted to tribute a little to that movie (being one of my favorites), and rather than just doing a flat board with desert, I figured the mountain pass scene would be a cool scene to base it off of, especially since that scene employs bikes. I sketched it out and this is what I sent to him:

He liked the idea, so I began working on it. I had just recently watched this excellent video by one of my favorite YouTubers, and I was anxious to try the method out, so this gave me an excuse to do so. From here on out I pretty much just followed the video's instructions.

I start off by building up the layers using broken 1/4" insulation foam. It's thicker than the video, but it works for a board this size, which is about 18"x36". Much larger than I normally do a display board, but it makes sense considering the next step...

Before I continued, I wanted to make sure everything would fit on it, so he came over with his army and did a test fit. I found I had a little extra room to put some stuff on the ground level to break up the transition from the cliff to the ground. But this is a big army that needs a big board.

After adding some rock and debris, I sanded off the rough edges and blended the levels a little bit.

Next with a new tub of spackle, I got my hands dirty and filled in all the gaps, being sure to keep the striations visible in the rock face, but blend the top levels and rocks into the ground. This took a lot of spackle.

After the spackle dried, I went on to apply the sand, using a common construction sand. I did my usual procedure with this. First all purpose elmer's glue, then sand. Let it dry. Then did the coat of watered down glue over top to seal the sand in.

Now on to the coloring, because I am almost done. I am using cheap craft paints for this (Apple Barrel brand that you get at your common Walmart). I did the base coat in Burnt Umber which was tricky because the sand and rocks had a lot of nooks and crannies. I found the best way of doing it was taking a mug filled with the paint, add some water and some sort of flow aid (I just used a dishwasher rinse agent), this allowed the paint to flow easier into the tight spots the brushes have a hard time getting into while keeping most of the opacity of the paints. I was careful to not make a wash, though, I just wanted to thin the paint some and improve its flow.

Next I did a couple heavy drybrush coats of Golden Sunset. It took a few coats because I didn't want it to be too brown, but liked keeping the brown underneath and in all the cracks.

 

Finally I did a selective highlight drybrush of Lite Mocha to knock down some of the yellow and give it a final sandy look.

And that's it! A lot simpler and quicker than I feared, and I now love this construction method to make high cliffs. Today I'm prepping for the tourney this weekend so unfortunately I wont have a chance to show you the final board with Jarom's army on it until I take some photos at the event, so I look forward to that.

On another note, I realized I forgot to do a post on my army and display! So you will see that too at the event.