Gateway Under the Hill

This is going to be the start of one of my new tangents. With the release of the newest edition of D&D, Mantic's Dungeon Saga ( I didn't buy in as I just couldn't imagine trying to clean the mold lines off that many figures made out of that horrible resin/plastic stuff they use), and finding a great post on making dungeon terrain by DaggerandBrush my mind has turned to making my own dungeon delving set up.

The overarching idea is the adventurers going deep underground to confront the forces of the Fae lords. I'm holding off on who the adventurers are going to be until the miniatures arrive which might be a couple more weeks as they are being shipped across the Western Sea. But my initial set of pieces are going to be one of the entryways to Faerie through an ancient monolithic burial mound, like Newgrange or Maeshowe .

As this is going to be part of what might be an elaborate set of dungeon pieces so I figured I might as well start at the beginning and make the gateway first. Not sure how useful as a gaming piece it will be but it could be plopped down on the board to form a link between the interior sections and a more open set up outside.

The stones have all been carved out. Still need to work on the ground around it. 

 Since this is a big piece I also decided to make a few smaller ones to try things out on first. I figured hallway sections would be a perfect start. I'm not entirely sure how I'd like to make them at this point. So I'm gonna try out a couple of different styles and see which one I like the best. I think in the end it is gonna be a battle between playability ( not my first concern as I'm unsure I'll ever game with these) and looks. 

This one is a simple test piece and will be used a backdrop for taking pictures. First stage is carving the stonework out of the insulation foam and then sanding everything to knock off the rough edges.

Next a coating of wood-filler, a little more light sanding, and then a mix of sand and matte medium to fill in the dirt.

With basic paint job. I wanted to avoid the usual grey and liked the brownish color you see in a lot of pictures of sarsen stones. After this I need to add a bunch of little details.