Saint Kristos – Pirate Island – Chapter 4

I haven’t touched this project since February 2020 but, after picking up some ships recently, I felt inspired to do something. 

As a quick refresher, Saint Kristos will be my maximum opus! 

Basically a huge pirate island with a town, port, plantations and, of course, ships. 

The idea is to have it set up, permanently, on a 12ft by 8ft table. I’m gonna need a bigger cabin right. 

Anyway, as a sort of test/draft whatever, I thought I’d pick up some insulation foam and have a go at making some smaller islands. 

It was such a nice day I decided to use the tailgate on my truck as a hobby desk. I started by roughly drawing out the island shapes then got cutting. 

I got six in total with plenty of little off cuts for rocks etc. On one of the islands I added a narrow little dock. 

I also had a couple of little boo-boo’s with the knives. After retrieving my thumbs and sewing them back on I started shaping the islands. Making the sides look rocky was fun and I also used my fingers to pull away bits as well. A hot wire cutter would have been handy to cut the low areas away (eg the sandy beach sections) but I managed. 

Next I glued (liquid nails) down raised areas and rocks etc. I wish I’d done more and gone a little higher but, as mentioned, these are sort of a test run. 

Next it was base coating with black acrylic paint. I learnt my lesson years ago that you can’t spray paint foam. This was a little time consuming but I didn’t mind.

Then I dry brushed all the rocky areas with a concrete grey acrylic. In retrospect I should have raised the rock edges around each island as it would’ve looked a little more realistic. 

Then I used matt white acrylic and dry brushed again. I also used the white as a base coat for the areas that will be sandy. 

Next I added flock and sand. The sand I used was off white grout as I wanted the beaches to have that almost stark white look like the more tropical islands have. 

Here’s the basic end result although I do plan on adding shrubs, small rocks, logs and trees. Oh and detail the little dock too.

Not bad for a few hours work I reckon and I definitely learnt some things. For instance, when stacking up pieces of foam I need to blend and hide the joins more. 

Cheers 

IRO