Terrain - how to make Snowy Roads

 

A few weeks ago I posted some photos of snowy roads or tracks that Lee and myself made for our Retreat from Moscow shenanigans. Several times I've been asked how we made them, luckily I took a few photos as we went along.

I had an idea of what I wanted, something flexible, so it would hug any terrain features, hills and alike and be heavy enough not to move around or curl at the edges.

I thought of the idea of using rubber mats, like you get at a gym, but these were very expensive and I didn't want to waste money if it didn't work.

Then one day walking around Poundland I noticed these door mats, which I thought would be ideal, especially as they were covered in little nipples to brush mud off of your shoes. I thought that would help keep on my caulk mixture in place. So like an idiot I bought 2, thinking that would be enough, I should have bought at least 5 of them!!! They only cost £2.50 each

I'd previously cut 1 mat out into various shapes and while Lee spread our mixture over the roads, I cut out more using just a pair of scissors. I was a little worried at first as the nipples were very visible and might ruin the whole plan?

What is this special mixture you have, I hear you ask. Well its this from Screwfix, No Nonsense, Flexible Caulk. Any brand will do, but its GOT to be flexible. This was just over £4 a tube.

We squirted 3 tubes into my wife best mixing bowl, (no, not really!) and added a few more squirts of a cheap brown acrylic paint and a splash of water, I was going to add a handful of sand but I didn't want it to dry out too quick. Next time I do this I will.

We left the downside of the mat plain, again this should do the job it was made for and help grip whatever its laid on?

I next painted over with our earth brown base colour, I gave it 2 generous coats. On the last coat I sprinkled on some sand.

To be honest you don't need to do this, but I was getting impatient waiting for the paint to dry.

The sand also helped cover up some of the nipple shapes.

One stupid thing I forgot to do, was cut out a T junction.....doh!

When it was fully dry, I gave it all another coat of paint, some of the sand came off, but most stayed in place.

You can hardly see the nipples now?

Lucky my wife was out this day, because I did all this work on our dinner table, lets hope she doesn't read this post?

Next up was a dry brush all over with white paint, again the same as we did with our bases.

Which came out pretty well.

Next up I scooped on our snow mixture on the edges of the roads, the mixture is just Woodlands scenic Snow, mixed in with a good quality PVA glue until its like a porridge consistency, if it urns out a little dry, just add a little water.

Next up I added a little water to some of the snow mixture and with a 2 inch brush, painted the mixture over the exposed road, to try and make to look slushy. I think it worked?

So there you go, How to make Snowy Roads!

AHPC 16 - Terrain - Winter Trees and road.

 

I'm not sure if this is a first or not but today's Terrain entry is actually from two Challengers. You may have seen on our respective blogs, that me and Lee got together a few weekends ago and spent the day making and finishing some Winter terrain for our Retreat from Moscow shenanigans, now of course this can also be used for our new Winter period, the Russo-Finnish War.

Here are 2 boxes of trees, that we winters over with a spray of white paint and also a flick and drybrush, with a very large 3 inch brush.

We also had to sand, paint, drybrush, add grass tufts and finally add the snow mixture 

\we are both pretty chuffed how they all came out, there are a total of 76 basses of trees, some smaller trees have 2 or 3 trees on them. The bases are 70mm circles from Warbases.

I have no clue how Byron will work out the points for these???

Next up we have some road, or trackways.

This is how we left them after our days terrain building.

And here's how they ended up!

They were painted twice with our earth brown mix, then drybrushed white before adding our winter snow mixture.

We cut out some different shapes and bends, but stupidly forgot a T-Junction?!?!

The straight long lengths measure 15 inches long and 3.5 inches wide, all in all the measure approx. 17.5 feet in length.

Once again, I'm not really sure how Byron will work this one out??

But as its a 2-Man project the points, whatever they are will be split down the middle, half for Lee and half for me!

Byron was very kind and gave us 120 points, giving us both 60 points.

How to paint 2mm figures. An idiots guide.....

I've been asked on my blog and on Facebook "How I Paint my 2mm figures". So I thought I'd turn it into a post rather than write it down over and over again.

I will admit this may not be THE way to paint up 2mm figures, but its the easiest way I've found. (cheers Richard). Unfortunately this doesn't make 2mm figures look like works of art, they are 2mm after all? But it'll give you, dear reader an insight how to make a reasonable job of it.

Ok here goes..... 

Mistake no1, I based all my figures up on MDF bases first, I now wish I hadn't, only because, the Irregular minis have a cast on lip at the front and back of the figures. I didn't cut that off and it left the small gap between the front and back row, which you'd think wasn't a problem, that is until you've gotta paint the base of the figures!  I did try on a few bases, but have now given up and leave it the same colour as the units uniform.

After baseing them, I gave the unit 2 coats of Vallejo grey undercoat.

BigLee, gave me 2 pots (a lifetime supply) of Chinchilla dust, to use as abasing material. Smother the base with a roughly 50/50 of PVA and water and sprinkle the dust all over, this stuff is dust and I ended up breathing a lot in, in my haste, so be careful! Cough!

I left a bare spot on the back of the base. After chatting to Reject Richard and Postie I decided to have a name plate of some description on the back, I hadn't quite decided if I would use dice holder squares on the base, (to tot up casualties and the like), so I left it big enough to fit one or several on, just incase.

For the basecoat of the unit I used Army  Painter Speed Paint Enchanted Blue.

there has been a lot of press with pros and cons with these paints, I've not tried them on anything over 2mm, so can't comment, if they bleed into the next colour or not, but they do work well for 2mm figures, I can tell you that. Even in 2mm they give you a highlight, which adds to the look of the figures.

These have only had one coat, I have painted another unit with two coats that give you a darker blue finish.

After the blue basecoat I painted on the first coat of the base colour, which is an Emulsion paint from Wilkinsons called Nutmeg Spice. 

Now I must admit to going a bit mad here, I've got 12 x 2.5 litres tins of the stuff.....

yeh I know...

Next up is the flesh, Reject Richard said "You only need to paint the faces" He was right!

I can hardly see the face, let alone the hands. I did tell Richard I was going to paint the cuffs, not sure whether he believed me or not?

All I did, with a thin brush was to run the colour over where the face should be, it doesn't matter if you go higher, because you'll just go over that later on.

I only painted the front rank of each base though using my goto flesh colour Tanned Flesh from Miniature Paints.

With a bigger brush, dot on a black hat. I did try another technique where I wiped over the hats with a wide brush, but wasn't happy with how it turned out. In 2mm dots are king.

Next up was the second coat of Nutmeg Spice for the base, just for any bits you miss.

Then a generous helping of Galeria matt varnish, I love this stuff, how ever much you slap on it dries without leaving any hazy marks and is very very matt.

For 2mm, you need to make the bases look good, that's the main thing you're gonna see. So it was highlight time. First up a drybrush of Vallejo Cork Brown.

Followed by another drybrush, this time with Iraqi Sand.

I wanted each unit to have a flag, again it helps with the overall effect. First off drill a hole through the bases of the figure, for my flagpoles I was using pins, so make the drill size a little bigger than the pin.

Drill all the way through the base, its just easier than trying not to, and make the pin more secure.

Ooo Flags, lots of 'em!

All the flags are oversized by roughly half, mine measure between 4 and 5 mm

Make sure the flag fits and you haven't scratched too much paint off the figures.

Cut the pin down, so the bottom of the flag sits just above the hats of the men.

Using a dot of Superglue, squeezed onto a piece of paper, dip the bottom of the pin in, then stick it in the hole!

For the flock I used 2 kinds, one was 2mm the other 1mm.

Sorry I can't remember who they were from.

In the pot it goes, after dolloping on lashings of PVA. Give it a bang and a shake after taking it out.

And you should end up, with something like this!!!

For the labels, I wanted something, 1. I could read 2.Not to be so intrusive that it was the first thing you saw when looking at the base. It did take me quite a while to match in the brown colour to the colour of my bases. You need to print the things out, because most of the time the colour matched perfectly on the computer, but hardly ever when printed out. Once you sorted the colour, you can't use another printer, either. Because the colour will turn out different.

Sharpe scalpel and cut out. You'll notice on this page the grey and blue to the left of the brown. I chose to colour code the 4 countries involved. Here we have Grey for France and Blue for Spain.

Again every gamers best friend, a 50/50 mix of PVA and water is used to glue the label to the base.

And there you have it front and back.

My "How to paint 2mm figures"

Now go give Irregular Miniatures a call and order some figures!!!

Wish I was on commission!