Desert Terrain Day 12

And I've almost finished the terrain pieces. Just the plateau, river and road pieces to go. And adding tufts and scrub to various pieces. And crops and palms to the fields and plantations. I might also go back and tint various rocks to add some variety.

Anyway, here are the nearly-finished pieces:

Steep hill and gentle hills

 

Fields and plantations

Sand dunes and gully

 

Scrub and village bases

This afternoon I've been making tufts to add to them. I started off doing 2mm tufts on some A6 pieces of two potential backing materials - the backing sheets from adhesive flexometal that I use to line boxes for troop storage and glossy photo paper (12 x A4 sheets from the pound shop). Then I did some mixed 2mm/4mm tufts on the foil backed parchment that I've been using.

Bottom left = flexometal backing; Bottom right = glossy photo paper

The next test for the two trial pieces is how easily the tufts will come off - that will need to wait until tomorrow to give the tacky glue time to cure. However, like I saw previously with OHP film and plastic from punched-pockets, the flexometal backing appeared to develop a static charge on the surface which meant lots of the static grass loosely adhered even where there was no glue.

After letting them settle for a bit I did a small sheet of 4mm tufts on the foil-parchment:

Provided the tufts on the test backings peel off easily,


Tomorrow afternoon (and into the evening), I'll be at the club for a big game of King of the Battlefield - all those Russians I painted up during the Challenge will get their first blooding!

Desert Terrain Day 09

I took Tuesday evening off (it was my birthday, so that's allowed!) and only did a little bit last night - basecoating over the grit/sand.

Today I carried on, first with a wash. I realised after doing the first two pieces that the mix was too dark so I watered it down for the remaining six. I then dry-brushed them with the basecoat and then two lighter shades. However the first two pieces were still too dark so I went back over them with the basecoat.

Here's a pic of the six almost-finished pieces:

I've still got to add tufts and little bits of brush but that will have to wait until I've got all the other pieces done.

I've also added sand to the dunes bases and sealed them:

Tomorrow I'll be doing the basecoat, wash and drybrushing on those. I will also be sanding down the filler on a few other pieces - if I have time I'll add grit and sand to those as well.

Desert Terrain Day 07

Not a bad evening's work.

Filler applied to the steep hill and the edges of the field/plantation bases:

And the flat bases (for villages, scrub/rocky ground), gully and gentle hills have had grit and sand added:

Tomorrow night I'll be sealing the grit and sand with diluted PVA, then will paint them on Wednesday night. I'll be adding grit/sand to the dunes and fields/plantations as well.

Desert Terrain Day 06

Today saw some more messy fun coating terrain pieces with filler and I have got most of them done now - just the fields/plantations, the steep hill and the plateau still to do.

I got the dunes coated this morning, then added Das clay over the bamboo skewers on the river pieces to create banks. I also did a couple of test pieces on the road sections - one with Das over the skewers, one with filler over the skewers and a scrap piece with just filler. spread over the surface. When the filler had dried on the last one I spread PVA over the filler and added sand to see if that would cause warping - it didn't. This evening I got all the river and road sections covered with filler.

Looking at the road sections, I think I might have been OK to forget the skewers and just coat them with filler - I might cut some more strips and do that. The ones I've done so far can always be used as narrow rivers for other gaming.


At one point while the filler was drying, I decided to strip down a couple of the topiary ball halves. You don't half get a lot of pieces - I got 180 off the leafy one and 200 off the grassy one. And that's just from half a ball!

And I think I might have found a use for the frame they came off:

Thunderdome?

I think tomorrow night I'll be adding filler around the edges of the field/plantation bases and make a start adding sand to the hills, gully and dunes.

Desert Terrain Day 05

After Thursday's post I carried on for a bit and cut and bevelled some more ePVC - bases for the impassable and a steep hill, plus a bunch of 20cm strips for river (8cm wide) and road (4 cm wide) sections.

Those who have read the comments on Thursday's post will have spotted an error I made - Das clay shrinks as it dries, causing warping. After seeing that comment yesterday morning I checked the fields and "dunes" bases and sure enough, they'd warped. I ended up removing the Das (and Milliput - that one didn't warp) from the field/plantations and flexed the dunes to release the clay forms - I've since superglued them in place.

The bits I cut on Thursday night got taken into work yesterday and were sanded during my lunch break. I didn't do any more work in the evening as I had a couple of drinks after work.

Before heading out this morning I decided to try something out. I took one of the plantation bases (the textured wallpaper had come off with the Milliput) and gave it a coat of filler. When I got back a few hours later the filler had dried and there was no warping - I should be able to use filler to create the field ditches.

For the road and river sections there is a much bigger risk of warping, so I cut some 20cm lengths of bamboo skewers and superglued them near the edges. They're a bit too thick for the road banks (but ideal for the river banks) so I sanded them down to reduce the raised effect.

I also had some messy fun covering the gentle hills, gully and the flat (for scrub and village) pieces with filler. I've also glued the plateau and steep hill to their bases.

Here's a pic of everything:

And a close-up on some of the river & road sections:

Tomorrow I'll be doing some more work with the filler, doing the roads, rivers and dunes. And maybe the edges around the fields/plantations.


While I was out I did a bit of shopping. After last Saturday's post a couple of people had mentioned that they'd found small topiary balls in pound shops - I'd never seen any in my local ones. Until today that is, so I picked one up. I also picked up a couple of flower sprays in Wilko:

Bits from the topiary ball

The big petals and leaves probably can't be used, but the rest will add more variety and help to break up the green monotony a bit.

Desert Terrain Day 03

I was feeling a bit under the weather at the beginning of the week so didn't do any more work on Monday or Tuesday. And I forgot to take pics last night (not that there would have been much to see). I had finished shaping the hills with the hot-wire cutter, glued them onto ePVC bases then I made a quick pass with the cutter to blend the edges to meet the base. Today I took the hills to work and sanded them during my lunch break.

This evening I did some work on the field, plantation and dunes bases. I started off using Milliput but realised I wouldn't have enough and it probably wasn't ideal. So I switched to Das air-drying clay.

Here's a pic of everything so far:

After work I made a trip to 4D Modelshop to buy some more ePVC sheets - I'll be cutting a base for the "impassable" terrain piece to go on and also cutting some strips for roads and rivers..I also picked up a Foam Factory 2-in-1 hot-wire kit which includes a cutter/router and a hot-knife. The former will be the most useful as it gives a larger "throat" for cutting and sculpting.

Desert Terrain Day 01

This afternoon and early evening I've been working on the desert terrain. The first job was to paint the undersides of the bases:

Once the second light coat had dried, I sorted out which bases would get used for which terrain types and marked them up. I've assigned three boards each for fields and plantations. For quick and easy furrow texture I cut out bits of textured wallpaper from a sample I picked up a while ago, then stuck them on using spray adhesive. 

Note to self - do not buy the cheap cans from pound shops. The glue comes out in globs and the nozzle soon blocks up. 

I also needed a gully piece so I cut a rough shape from 10mm styrofoam then shaped it with a hot-wire cutter. As the spray glue had crapped out on me by then I haven't been able to stick it in place on one of the bases.

I then cut some pieces of 10mm styrofoam for gentle hills. I've started shaping the edges with the hot-wire cutter - I'll carry on tomorrow night. I also cut out a suitably sized piece of 50mm styrofoam and roughly carved it to resemble a rocky plateau for a piece of "impassable terrain".

I'm going to need to get some more sheets of ePVC as I've decided the mount the hills and plateau on bases to help protect them.

So, here's a pic of everything so far:

Tomorrow I'll be doing some work with Milliput - the fields and plantations need to be edged (and maybe divided up) with ditches and water channels and I need to make some dunes on three of the bases. That leaves three bases, one which will be for scrubland.

Another job I need to do for this project is to make up a load of tufts and bits of sage-brush