My links page has a link to my friend Max's (Maksim) game blog, so this is another homage piece in the collection. It used to be Maksim's BAGELS. You can see where the sign was changed. The residents of this town are such rubes that they had no idea what a bagel was. All they would do is complain how hard these here donuts were, and request caramel and sprinkles instead of cream cheese. So why fight an endless battle? He switched to what the market wanted. Some punk came by and added his own commentary to the situation via some creative grafitti.
Take note of the base. The little plasticville food stand came with a cement curb base. This was painted a model railroad "concrete" color. Windsor-Newton Peat brown ink was used to line the separations of the concrete blocks with a fine brush. This type of lining will give many a well-defined urban surface some real visual appeal. The concrete itself was lightly dry-brushed right on the edges with a walnut color - this is a brown that is almost black. You frequently see this kind of worn, stained concrete effect on old cement works, or concrete curbs that were painted long ago but have worn away. Let's look at the roof :
Maksim's Donut Hole
The back and sides show the creeping crud (Running Rust Technique). As usual, there is a swathe of it where the building meets the concrete slab. Since the outside of this building appears tiled, I lined the cracks with peat brown ink to make each tile a distinct masterpiece of cruddy filth.
So what is this roof made of? Probably sheet metal or plywood. The skylights are made of cheap plastic with steel or aluminum rings. Those were painted white and once again lightly dry-brushed brown to simulate dirt and dinge.
The gutters were thoroughly brushed with black pastel chalk. All sorts of dust and corruption accumulates in gutters, and they look terrible even if they're regularly cleaned out.
Dry-brushing the reinforcing slats was kind of a chore, but worth it. It makes them really stand out. I used silver, with a very small dry-brush. I used sideways brushstrokes so as not to get any silver on the other part of the roof. Then, to add insult to injury, I put a small line of brown ink on either side of the slat to make it really "pop".
The interior of this fairly small stand is functional. The donuts themselves were easy: Just put a small glob of green putty onto the rack, spear with toothpick, TA-DA! Instant donut, ready to be painted. Several were put on a skewer behind the rack, hanging over a fresh 55-gallon oil drum of pure lard. Fresh donuts from out of the grease!
For the floor, I washed it in dingy water, and then drip-dropped a few grains of pastel chalk from my chalking brush. It was like flicking ashes from a cigarette. When the powder hits the wet floor, it spreads in stippled stains and looks like some nasty drippings of donut- or axle-grease. In this town, the two are interchangeable.
