easy peasy strange terrain

as I was rotting my brain on instagram the other day I saw a story by my friend Ben (@apocrypha_now) of a museum piece I didn't recognise and I asked WHO IS THE ARTIST??? Well, he told me that it was picasso and I felt like a fool and failure of my art history knowledge because duh of course it was picasso. but, I found the piece to be very inspiring and he said he'd race me to do something similar as terrain and I guess I decided to try it out.

Pablo Picasso, Woman with Outstretched Arms, 1961. Painted Iron

Papaercraft has always appealed to me and playing with people's sense of immersion is always an interesting thing as well. Instead of trying to capture realism for the little tiny guy dice rolly playtime, we could make strange papercraft standees. It's all make believe so let's get creative! Yippee! So, these are little miniature immersion breaking paper terrain pieces inspired by PP himself.

the unsuspecting ???

The process for these is fairly simple, cut out some shapes of cardstock, cardboard, glue those pieces together. Done. Some recommendations I would make would be to pretty decently cover your base cardboard in pva, mod podge before adhering anything else. Adding pva to cardboard and paper causes it to warp pretty substantially. So, layer it on, let it dry, let it warp. When it's fully dry, you can flatten it out pretty easy and then adhere things to it. I'm not saying it won't warp anytime in the future, but it's just a little easier to keep it flat if you seal it at the start of the process. uhhh of course you can kind of unwarp things after gluing them together too, it's just not as easy ok? I hope this makes sense please let this make sense I need you to understand what I'm saying please please please

cover it in glue

this one too

see how it's warping?

after drying you can bend and cut and place it. I will say, long pieces like this don't work great for the process

you're gonna want some of THESE

adhere them wherever just make sure they're flush with the bottom

glue glue glue (this kind of didn't work it's too long it still warped)

tada! it's something

smaller examples

i guess it's part of a house idk

I hope that made any sense. from my experiments I will also add... Cardboard to cardboard is much better. Smaller base size is better for not warping. You should probably put a few layers of mod podge or pva over the whole thing when it's dried to further seal and rigidify it. The rest is in your hands to figure out... Good luck...

Now, whether or not these pieces last forever, who knows. Depends on how well you maintain them. it's a lot cheaper and better for the world than buying more plastic crap I think! Have fun with it or don't, but you've read this far and that's good enough for me!

-twabbis