Terrain Building Guides: Making undergrowth, part 3

Now it is time to finish off the pieces of undergrowth. After everything has dried I start with painting the entire piece in a dark brown basecoat with lots of water to get an even layer. The paint I use for this is wall paint bought from a local retailer. Its more or less the same color as Games Workshop's Scorched Brown.

8) Pieces basecoated

After the basecoat I drybrush a brown similar to Games Workshop's Bestial Brown over the whole piece to bring out a lighter color from it.

9) First drybrush

After making sure the first drybrush is completely dry I drybrush Games Workshop's Bleached Bone over all the sand and rocks.

10) Final drybrush of the first layer

Now I pick out all the big rocks and larger bits of sand with Games Workshop's Adeptus Battlegrey. Painting the rocks in a different color than the ground will add some depth to the piece and match most of my own models basings.

11) The rocks painted grey

After the basecoat is dry I drybrush the grey areas heavily with Games Workshop's Codex Grey.

12) The rocks drybrushed

Finally I add a highlight by drybrushing the rocks lightly with Games Workshop's Fortress Grey and this finishes the painting portion of the project.

13) Painting done

Now I add static grass heavily over the whole piece using PVA glue to glue it into place.

 14) Flocked!

And last but not least I add bits of clump foliage, using a hot glue gun, to add more life to the piece and to actually make it look like undergrowth.

15) Finished!

I'm finally done. The pieces will soon be featured in a coming terrain feature article where it will be shown on a gaming table. Thank you for reading and having patience with this project! Hopefully you found this article interesting and informative!

-Tobias

Terrain Building Guides: Making undergrowth, part 2

Time to get back to my pieces of undergrowth.

After the foamboard has dried onto place upon the bases its time to add some wood filler. I generally tend to cover most of my terrain projects this way. It adds some texture and makes it more durable as well as evening out edges.

5) Wood filler added

Now I add a few pebbles in clusters which will act as bigger rocks near the egdes of the foamboard. I used superglue for this as it saves some drying time and let me get onto the next step quickly.

6) Pebbles in place

After the pebbles I add patches of sand around the pebbles as well as some small random areas  around and on the foamboard. I use PVA glue for this step.

7) Bases sanded

And now its time to let it dry. As PVA takes time and I don't want to ruin the terrain pieces I will let them dry overnight so watch out for part 3 of this undergrowth saga, when I paint, flock and finish the pieces!

-Tobias

Terrain Building Guides: Making undergrowth, part 1

Today I have decided to take a break from painting and cleaning to make a few terrain pieces. Eight pieces of undergrowth to be exact and a guide of how I made them for the blog. This will be a three-parter since I need to let the pieces dry overnight in between steps as well as I don't actually have time to paint and flock them today.

First of all I took a few odd pieces of wood we use as bases for terrain pieces from our gaming club. These were leftovers since David made his river (a project that might be featured here). I started by roughly marking the outlines for the bases.

1) Marking the outlines of the bases

Then I took these out to my workshop and cut them out with a powersaw being very careful since such small pieces actually is pretty dangerous to make and the saw is quite powerful. When cut I sanded the edges of the bases. One of the pieces didn't make the cut as I thought it looked kind of silly so only seven made it through.

2) Bases cut and sanded

Now I cut out a few small pieces of foamboard to raise areas on the bases. Then I removed the paper on top of these with a knife while evening them out to fit as raised areas of the undergrowth.

3) Foamcore pieces

These I glued, using PVA glue, onto the bases and made sure they fit right. Afterwards I put weight onto the pieces to make sure the foamboard didnt lift from the base while drying.

4) Foamcore glued

This is the last thing I do to them today. I got plenty of work left on them, but at least the worst part is over. Now I have to leave the pieces to dry and for the rest of the work I have to go down to our gaming clubs as I don't have the supplies needed for the rest at home. I will continue this project in part two after the weekend.

-Tobias

The Inner Geek takes form!

Welcome to a new era of geekdom. This blog is dedicated to my and my friends different hobbies and activities. It will feature articles on many different subjects and will not be concentrated on a single hobby. If me or any of the future contributors to this spot on the interwebs decide that something is interesting or that we want to share something with the world it will go here.

Right now I'm currently working on the graphical layout of the blog and have just started on it. It will probably take a few days to work out how I want it to look and even longer trying to create an original logo and graphics for the page. So bear with me!

-Tobias