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Trust the Process: Making Modular Rocks for Miniature Photography
Riiiiiight. I said I was going to explain how I made the rocks for this project , so here we go. These aren’t stunningly beautiful works of art on their own, but projects like this used to intimidate me. They’re messy, the early stages look terrible, and you have to trust that everything will eventually come together. Fortunately, the process was much easier than I expected, and I ended up with a result I was happy to photograph. I’m sharing what I tried partly to remove that intimidation factor for anyone considering a similar project—and partly to record the experiment so others can build on it. Apparently my PhD training followed me into the hobby. Materials - Foam: I used the bead-style polystyrene sold at craft stores. I do not recommend it. Get some two-inch XPS insulation foam from a hardware store instead. - White glue: Any basic white glue should work, but I used Mod Podge. - Fine sand: This adds texture and helps disguise the foam beads. - Pigment powders: I used these to introduce some color variation beneath the final gray layers. - Flocking: I bought an inexpensive pack containing three shades of plastic “grass.” - Cheap nylon brushes: Get the cheapest ones you can find. This process will not be kind to them. - Craft paint: Black, white, and brown were enough for me. - Dish soap: Just a few drops for the final sealant mixture. - **Black or brown ink**: For making washes. A Better Second Attempt These were my second attempt at building rocks for elevation in Baselair photos. My first version consisted of jagged chunks of foam sprayed black. You can see them in action here They provided the height I needed, but they never really looked like rocks within the scene. Like many of us, I turned to YouTube in search of an easy way to improve them. My process was based mainly on this tutorial Shaping the Foam I began with the wrong kind of foam. Seriously: skip the craft-store bead foam and buy insulation or XPS foam. I divided the sheet into rough five-inch sections, then drew irregular outlines inside them to create a variety of rock shapes. Using repeated stabbing motions, I cut along the outlines without necessarily slicing completely through the foam. The next part was messy but surprisingly fun: I punched the pieces apart. The foam broke fairly easily along the cuts, and those jagged breaks created some useful natural-looking texture. I also dragged the blade across the tops and bottoms, randomly removing material to make the surfaces less flat and uniform. Sealing and Adding Texture Once I had the shapes, I made a slurry of Mod Podge and gray craft paint. At this point, my main goal was simply to turn the bright white foam gray and begin sealing its surface. This first coat taught me an important lesson about drying. I covered each piece completely and left everything sitting on old newspaper overnight. Predictably, the Mod Podge bonded with the paper, and parts of it came away with the rocks the next morning. A dish-drying rack—or anything that keeps the pieces elevated—would have saved me some trouble. For the second coat, I slowed down and worked on one side at a time. I also added fine sand to the new slurry. This gave the surfaces more variation and helped conceal the obvious foam beads. Building the Color Before applying another gray Mod Podge coat, I scattered several pigment powders across the rocks. The colors looked a little alarming at first, but they added subtle variation beneath the later layers. Then came the washes: black or brown ink diluted with water. I absolutely soaked those foam blocks. It only took a couple of coats before the crevices were dark enough for my liking. Finally, I mixed black and white craft paint into a medium gray and began drybrushing. I worked through progressively lighter grays, catching the raised textures with each pass. This was the point when everything finally started looking like rock. Trust the process. Adding the Grass For the final stage, I added flocking to one side of each piece. This meant I could stack and rotate the finished rocks to create quick visual variation within a scene. First, I mixed a sealant using roughly three parts Mod Podge to one part water. I added a few drops of dish soap to act as a surfactant and help the mixture spray more evenly. Shake it thoroughly, it takes some effort to combine. I brushed pure Mod Podge onto the side where I wanted the “grass,” then heavily scattered my darkest flocking across the surface. After shaking off the excess, I applied a layer of the diluted sealant. I repeated the process with a lighter shade of flocking, using it more sparingly. That created a little more depth than a single flat color would have. The Finished Scene I love seeing everyone’s cool squares on Baselair. Sometimes the miniature alone is enough of a spectacle, but I really enjoy building an entire scene around it. Scenery may occasionally pull attention away from the work I put into painting the miniature, but creating these little environments excites and fulfills the imaginative part of me—the same part that drew me to the hobby in the first place. There was probably a more elegant solution for these photographs. Still, I had fun experimenting. I’m not normally a crafty person, and I certainly don’t think of myself as especially creative. Hopefully, seeing how rough these rocks looked along the way makes this kind of project feel a little more approachable and perhaps inspires someone else to make a few rocks of their own. How do you approach the crafting side of the hobby? What kinds of scenes have you built or hope to build someday?