Building a Mountain

Here I present a brief photo history of my first serious effort at building some landscape.  "Mountain" is perhaps overstating it, but it's a substantial piece of terrain all the same.

Earlier this summer construction began:

And then track was laid:

Jump ahead to September and I've decided that the space would be more useful if it were divided into two vistas, one inside, one outside.   So, for the outside scene I extend a track and build a base to build upon: 

An as yet undetermined structure will go here:

The plastercloth is painted, a step that I later find has little value, aside making this temporary state look a little nicer.

Next I start building other bits of wooden platform to support the hillside I plan to add.   In retrospect, I should have built higher so I could rely more on the wood then the newspaper for the form.

And here's a mountain of rolled up paper, taped down in bundles:  You can see my rolls of plaster cloth perched on top: 

The plaster cloth is now drying.  A lesson I later learned: don't build this close to your tracks!   It really limited my rock options later on.

Unfortunately I have no more intermediate photos to share.  My next step was casting about 70 rocks, gluing them on with white glue.  Then I tried embedding them into wet spackle, but that proved ineffective.  I then switched to a hot melt glue gun, which seemed to work for the most part, but in the end I went back to white glue.  

After the rocks were well and stuck, I started painting them.  I used a series of acrylic washes, about 1:10 mix.  I used a spray bottle, as recommended by an impressive Australian on YouTube.  I'm pleased with the results.

Once the paint dried I began my first foray in adding ground surfaces.  I'm pretty happy with the results.  I had some trouble with the glue, initially I hadn't sufficiently diluted it to spray it as a mist, but eventually I got it all sorted.  I plan to add a few more trees, and then a barn, some fencing and sheep etc. but that will have to wait till the environs are a bit closer to done.  The last thing i want to do is finish a space and then wreck it  as I work nearby.