Plantations and Ploughed Fields

I've been expanding my collection of terrain lately, and decided I needed a few more pieces of crops and ploughed fields. 

These here are made using spaghetti sticks, covered with my special recipe of Texture (tm). The emperor wanted to go for a ride around the painting room, so I made use of him to show the scale of the terrain pieces here. 

I added some flocking to a couple of the fields, to have more diversity of terrain, and I think they look quite good in representing small family kitchen gardens.

Having finished with using spaghetti on my terrain production, and being quite satisfied with the results, I treated myself with what would perhaps be deemed a more orthodox use of pasta, and came up with a tasty mushroom gravy to feast on while congratulating myself over the results of my latest project.

Wreck Markers - quick and inexpensive

I recently did a few wreck markers to use in wrecked vehicles, and some people have been asking me the how-to, so here is a quick tutorial.

The material used is synthetic fiber (from a pillow), and 3 color of spray: orange, red, and black.

First thing to do is take a handful of the fiber, it doesn't hold together very well at this point, but once you give it a few coats of spray, it develops sufficient structural integrity and doesn't fall apart easily.

The sequence of spray is this:

1 - Abundant orange on the lower half;

2 - (reasonable amount of) red over the orange

3 - Black on the upper half

You should give a few minutes between each coat of spray to let it dry a bit. In the lower half, you should not let any white on the fiber showing, but on the upper half, leave the recesses white, to represent the inner layers of smoke, hotter and lighter. Make sure to create a smooth transition between the red/orange and the black above.

 Once you finish preaying you'll have this:

The final step is to glue a base on it, to give it weight and make it stand on the table/model. I used 25mm bases or a bit larger, and added some epoxy to the underside to give extra weight. I used superglue on the base, and then pressed the bottom of my markers against it. Try to cover as much of the base as possible, don't let it too visible. I painted orange over any exposed parts of the bases.

Once your markers are properly glued to some adequate bases, you'll have no trouble leaving them on the vertical on the model.



Here is an example of how they look finished:

Alien Tropical Jungles

I recently made 8 pieces of area terrain depicting alien tropical jungles for our gaming club. I was inspired by the fluff behind the Xilos Horizon, the scenario of the starter set for Beyond the Gates of Antares, so I wanted to have a jungle table myself!

These were made using various items found in aquarium stores, glued to thick cardboard and then layered with my "dirt texture". Here you see the pieces next to a Concord trooper (28mm), to get a sense of scale:

These pieces have sufficient empty space to accomodate models within the area terrain, and I even added a couple tracks of beaten grass here and there.

This below is probably my favorite piece, a very alien-looking tree:

And here is a pic of the table set for our game of last saturday, featuring the 8 pieces of area terrain, along with the river sections I made a couple years ago (mostly for use on our games of Black Powder).

Making cliffs and hills - a Tutorial

Last week I worked on several cliffs for our gaming club. I did a little tutorial for those of you readers that might be interested in expanding your collection of terrain with very little investment, and to a great result.

The materials used are:
- Thick cardboard
- Expansive Foam (polyurethane)
- Paper glue and gardening dirt (for the texture)
- Paints and flocking

First, I cut the cardboard in some random shape. I did 7 pieces in total, and made them all distinct in both size and shape.

Next, I applied the expansive foam. As the name suggests, the product inflates quite a bit. Once dry it ends up ocuppying an area about 3x larger. The borders of the foam are dry enough to start working on after about 40min. Its not necessary to apply glue to the cardboard, just use the foam right over it, and it will stick to the cardboard as it dries.

What we do then is probably the only step in this tutorial that actually requires some skill. We need to carve the foam into the shape we want our cliffs/hills to have. As can be seen below, I did them with mostly vertical borders and plain top, which allow for easy placement of models.

It's important to carve away all the original surface of the foam, for it has a very polished finish, and the texture can't get a hold on that.

(The WIP cliffs next to an also WIP scifi soldier, for size comparison)

Once all the carving is done and we're happy with the shape of our pieces, it's time to apply the texture. I've already made a tutorial on how to do the texture, so you can take a look at that here.

I then let it dry over a day. Usually, for 28mm models, a period of 24h is enough for the texture to be completely dry, but those cliffs take a lot more of the material, so it won't be all dry in a day. But it's dry enough for us to scrape off the top a bit, so to remove the better part of the debris, to keep it plain so the models can sit firmly on it.

The pic below shows a cliff right after the texture was applied, and we can see the little pieces of thick dust all over the top. You can leave it there if you wish, but it's better to scrape them off, your models will be more stable on there this way.

The drying proccess brings us to the biggest issue with this technique. The texture is humid, and it causes the foam and cardboard to shrink as it dries. This makes the whole piece bend onwards and deform. 

There are some ways to deal with that. One is to put some heavy weight sitting over the borders of the cliff while it dries. A heavy book or two are probably a good option. The weight used over the cliff must be substancial, otherwise it will bend. Nature finds a way, trust me.

In order not to get wet texture on the book, you may put a sheet of paper beneath. As you can imagine, having something in contact with the wet texture is probably going to mess with it a bit, but you can go back to it once its dry and put some more texture over and correct whatever doesn't look good enough. Since it's going to be only a limited spot, it won't cause further bending, so there is no need to worry about weight on it on this second step of texture.

If you don't use weight on the cliff, you'll have to straighten it up later the hard way. The cliff below, for instance, I had to fracture and fill will foam again, to correct it. You can notice that the upper layer of the cardboard detatched from the rest, also. this you can fill with epoxy and then paint over, as I did. It's not advisable to use foam to fill such small gaps, as you're probably going to make a lot of mess.

Once all correcting is done, we're ready to paint the cliffs. I used 2 layers of  grey drybrush on the sides, to represent stoney surface.

Below you can see the result of the drybrush, as well as the split cardboard I mentioned previously. The reason I hadn't fixed it before painting was because I thought I'd manage to simply glue it back to place easily. I was wrong. I had to fill the gap with epoxy and then paint over it and drybrush. To mimic the brown undercoat of the texture,

I used Vallejo MC Leather Brown, and then used the 2 layers of grey drybrush as well. By the way, the Leather Brown is also used before the drybrush on any areas of the cliff where we notice the texture didn't cover well enough. There are a lot os bubbles in the foam, and sometimes the texture doesn't penetrate there, and you only notice it once it dries, so you can fix that by simply painting that spot brown.

The cliff on the left received both the medium and the light grey drybrush, the one on the right had only the first layer, the medium grey, so you can notice the difference, and how the light grey really makes the color pop.

For the top of the hill, I used a single layer of drybrush with light beige, as pictured below. I didn't do this step on the snow hills. These I wanted to keep very dark soil.

On the green hills/cliffs, after the beige drybrush I applied flocking. In the winter cliff, I represented the snow with white drybrush, and then added a few tuffs. The white drybrush must be random, more accumulated on some areas and scarce on others. If you do it too uniform, it won't look natural. Vallejo Model Color Foundation White is the ideal paint to do this step, as it has a very thick consistency.

The flocking on the green hills also has to be applied without uniformity. I do this by drybrushing paper color randomly over the top of the hills and a few areas of the stone borders, and then spilling flocking over it 2 or 3 times, to get a good coverage.

Below, you can see the final results of the cliffs, with an Algoryn trooper for scale.

How I paint my 1/72 - Part III

Day 10

On day 10 I did the highlighting of their breeches, using my standard two-layer technique. On the 2 pics below, the model to the right received the first layer of highlight (same color of basecoat). You can compare to the model to the left, which is yet to receive the first layer.

The second layer is basecoat color + white (2/1), and was done mainly over their knees, and a bit here and there, to further enhance the visual. On the pic below, the model to the left is on its second layer of highlight, and the one to the right is still on the first.

I also highlighted the yellow that evening, and started painting the white straps. I had painted the epaulettes white before washing the model black, so now I can highlight them as I go about painting the straps, too. 

Below you can see the visual I described on part II of this tutorial, where I mention painting the background color (here, yellow) over the areas that are to be white, so later when these are in fact painted white, I can leave the recesses on the background color, thus creating a strong shading that doesn't interfere with the yellow on the background, because the shading is the yellow itself, instead of a black or brown wash.

Day 11

Today, I painted their skin. The riders only have their heads exposed, as they're all painted with white gloves, so this was a pretty quick step. I use a mix of Citadel Cadian Fleshtone and Vallejo Light Flesh, usually 1/1. The first color, alone, is too dark, while the Light Flesh is too pale, so I prefer a mix of both, but there are several good skin paints out there, using a mix of these two is, again, just a personal preference.

The advantage of doing this is that when I want a stronger tone, such as when painting romans, I simply use a greater proportion of the cadian flesh, say, 2/1. Similarly, if I want a lighter tone, I may just as well increase the proportion of the vallejo paint in the mix.

I finished painting their faces and got into painting and highlighting some other details, while their skin dried up. Their canteens and bags, for example. The canteens were painted light blue grey, then washed with blue shade, while their bags were coated white and washed with a mix of black + grey shades. Their white gloves also received the same wash, and then were highlight white. 

Later on that evening, I washed their skin with Citadel Reikland Fleshshade.

Day 12

On this last day of painting, I highlighted their faces and finished some other details, such as the highlight on the black areas of their gear and uniforms.

The highlight on their skin was done with a single layer, on the same mix of colors as of the basecoat. It's done with precise touches of the brush on the most prominent areas of the face: nose, chins and cheeks.

On the pic below, the model to the left received the highlight on those areas.

All models complete, I now glue them to their bases and call it a day. On the following evening, they'll receive texture to their bases, and on the day after, once it's completely dry, I'll drybrush it and apply flocking. This process has already been covered on another tutorial I did, which you can find here.

And that's it, 12 evenings of painting, a couple more days to do their basings, and here we have 2 finished cavalry units for my british army. 

These guys will be featuring here on the blog soon, in all the glory of properly textured and flocked bases!