Desert Wadi Part Four

 Hello There! I have taken the final dry brush to the first part of the desert wadi.

These have not had a final dry brush of white. this is done when the previous coats of paint have dried, otherwise it does not cause any raised areas to 'pop' out. It merely draws the previous colour out in that dry brush.

I have considered putting some old pale dry tufts and static grass in the corners of the cliff face. I will do that later.

Overall I am very happy with the results. The rock face casts merge in very well together and do not have any obvious repeated shaped in any of them.

I will complete a straight section, a straight section with a sloping access to the higher level, (above), a bend, a section which runs out to a flat area and a steep source of the river.

Modular Terrain Part Four

Hello There! I have been working away on the desert terrain again. I have a large number of modular tiles which now only require painting.

Here is a comparison of the tiles during painting. The first, on the left is the colour of the sawdust, when it has been glued to the board.

The middle is a coat of yellow ochre with random watered down blogs of raw umber, burnt umber and burnt sienna with a little red added as well.

On the right is the heavy dry brush of an equivalent 'Iraqui Sand' 

The main paints I use artists acrylic paints, mixed with some extra PVA adhesive and thinned with water. I add  the PVA to add extra binding to the surface of the scenery so that is harder wearing.

I prefer not to use mixed colours, because I have been making terrain for a number of years now and so like to maintain consistent shades and colours, by using the paints straight out of the pot.

The main colour I use is yellow ochre and a thinned watery wash of raw umber and burnt umber, splashed irregularly in places to break up the main colour.

When this has dried I do a heavy dry brush of yellow ochre again and then various heavy and light drybrushes of a mixed equivalent to Vallejo Iraqui sand.

This is one of the few colours that I have to mix due to the high price of Vallejo paints, to cover such a large area.

I have found that mixing raw umber, white and yellow ochre, adjust to get the right colour obtains a colour hardly different to the Vallejo colour. There is easily enough to cover a very large area and can also be used on figure bases to pull the figures and terrain together to match.

I have also added a small thin wash of some 803 Brown Rose, or again mixed an equivalent, and lightly dry brushed this colour in a few places of the terrain. This is to mimic some of the stronger reds present in the larger drop on terrain rocks. Otherwise they look a little incongruous, as they stand out as a vastly different colour, on the table.

This red colour can also be lightly dry brushed over later, but not too much to completely obscure it. I just want to provide a hint of a different, matching colour.

Dry brushing does dislodge somr of the saw dust which is on the surface of the tile but I have collected ths to add to a scatter material, mixed with hardened clump foliage and pale static grss to hide some of te joins between the scenic tiles and break up the flat surface of the ground work.

Desert Wadi Part Three

Hello There! I haver added to the desert wadi and decided to add a few pictures to show how I carved and shaped the styrofoam. The second part is here.

Here I have fixed the plaster cast rock face in place, against the styrofoam. I have deliberately not matched the height of the rock face to the styrofoam. Once the adhesive has set I trim any excess with a craft knife. You do not need to cut back to any depth, just enough to not have any over hang above the casting.

Once the cutting back s done then take the surform planer and refine the cutting back you just did. Avoid popping the casting off the tile while doing this.

I always had reservations about using Woodland Scenics cast rock faces as I was unsure how to join them all up to make a long run of cliff face and not have it look false. Here I am working on a meandering source of the wadi which terminates in a very narrow ravine. Instead of using a number of flat sections which would need to go around a corner I had a deep casting which had a round face to it. I scored a line to show where the back of the casting would fit but still provide a curved face to the ravine.

I offered the casting up to its proposed position to make sure it fitted well.

I then used a general purpose saw to cut the curve off.

I used masking tape to hold the castings in place. After allowing the adhesive to set over night I ended up with this.

I will post some photos of a completed and painted wadi section in the next blog post.

Desert Wadi, Part Two

Hello There! I have had some time to continue with the desert wadi. The first part is here.

While the first wadi section was faced with the larger rock casts from Woodland Scenics, I decided to start another section and as one side was very low I started to use the smaller casts. I also took the larger casts and cut them down to a more manageable depth.

I cut the hardened casts with the straight metal edge of a steel ruler and a Stanley knife or craft blade. I scored a guide line across the back of the cast, so I did not damage the rock detail on the front of the casting.

Once the guide line is a few millimetres deep I could either snap the casting at the weak point or, if the casting was very thick, take a general building saw to the back of the casting and continue to cut the casting completely though. 

After the styrofoam was cut to size, using a Stanley knife, and then glued in place using  expanding foam, I fixed the rock face casting in place using tile adhesive. In places I have had to used expanding foam again to keep the castings in place, the tile adhesive sometime letting me down afetr a couple of days setting. This was probably down the colder weather not allowing the tile adhesive to set effectively and the casting absorbing some of the moisture out of the adhesive. I now wet the back of the plaster cast with a wet brush before gluing it in place.

In the instructions for using the expanding foam, apart from wearing gloves, it recommends spraying the area to be glued with a water spray. As my sprayer decided to stop working I simply brush painted the water onto both surfaces.  

As can be seen here the expanding foam has spread up over the castings. This can be easily removed once it has set. I trim the excess foam so it is level with the top of the casting so I can lay tile adhesive over it.

Here you can see one of the numerous joints between each casting. These can be covered or disguised with further tile adhesive or trimming any excess expanding foam and gluing the surface covering of stones, sand and sawdust over any unsightly gaps. 

Here you can see the castings, from the rear, extending over the styrofoam sides. I found it beneficial to retain the ragged edge and build up the styrofoam to match it.

Here is the first wadi section, I started a few months ago. I have painted the surface with yellow ochre, thinned with water and extra PVA added. Before the first coat has dried I added thinned blotches of raw umber, burnt umber and burnt sienna. This makes the desert colour irregular and more realistic.

The final painting is a heavy dry brush of Iraqui sand, or equivalent, and the various dry brushes of Iraqui sand and white.

This is some of the detail of the first wadi tile, but still requires a dry brush.

Here you can see the checks to make sure that the two terrain sections line up.

This is one side.

And here is the other.

I will post the next step for this project soon.

FIASCO, Wargames Show 'Loot'

Hello There! After looking through my posts I realised I had not described the items I had purchased at FIASCO.

In an attempt to resist the 'OOOOH! Shiney!' syndrome, which is the downfall of so many wargamers, I had a fixed idea of what I might buy if I saw it for sale, in the show.

I have used a few combinations of enamel paints, to represent old worn wood. I normally paint scored plastistrut and then add various coats of thinned enamel washes. With enamel paints, you have to clean the brushes with white spirit. This not only knocks hell out of your brushes, (so I have a set of designated brushes that I only use for enamels), but it gives off a lot of spirit odour, which is not healthy for you!

I visited the Great Escape Games stand and found these on the stall. I had asked about these two sets at the Partizan show and he had not yet received them in his stock. A few weeks down the line and here they are!

I will do a further post on these when I have tried them out.

I purchased some latex roads from Early War Miniatures, at the last Partizan show, and the dry grouns if to go on them to provide a gritty finish to the roads.

This company has been very helpful to me in the past. There website is here.

I usually browse the Stonewall Miniatures stand, when I see them at a show. This time I was able to purchase some figures for some planned and current projects. Above are 20mm figure packs of Indian troops in the desert, LRDG crews and WWII NW Europe British.

As the work on the cabin nears completion then I can start to change the composition of the 20mm Rapid Fire units I have at present.

This will include increasing the company sizes from 6/8 figures to 8/10 figures. Also the squadron size of tanks will be increased from 3 to 4.

Cemetary, 10mm

Hello there! I completed this recently, for a wargaming friend. He uses a number of 10mm size buildings for his games using 15mm figures. This smaller building footprint makes it more practicable and more fitting for the ground scale used in many different rule sets on the market.

Considering that this was only about four inches square this little model was packed with detail. I placed the head stones against the wall, along one side, so that figures could be placed inside the surrounding wall.

Desert Terrain Drop on Items Part Two

Hello there! With a few days off work I have been able to make some progress with some projects.

I originally used loose Cotswold Buff Chippings, spread randomly over the games table. This made it a bit of a chore to tidy up afterwards and players simply moved them out of the way when it suited them. Probably not something that happened while under fire!

When I introduced a game rule that they could not be moved, it proved very unpopular and slowed the game up a lot.

With rocks fixed to drop on bases they can also be used  as hard cover as well.  

 

These have all been painted, in yellow ochre, washed in watered down raw umber and burnt umber and dry brushed in various mixed shades of yellow ochre, and buff titanium. These are all artists paints and they allow you to keep your terrain a consistent colour and shade. Especially useful as I have been adding to my terrain stash over a number of years.

The Buff Titanium is very close to Iraqui sand from the Vallejo Model Colour range. I have previously made my own stock of this colour by mixing Raw Umber, White and Yellow Ochre to suit. I also add neat PVA for extra grip, (as I use this to dry brush the desert terrain before varnishing), so it holds the sawdust surface of the terrain together and hardens the surface up.

 

I have also added a slight shade of pale pink and red to the terrain, as it matched the the larger rocks above.

Here are some SHQ British Mediterranean infantry to give you and idea of the size of these drop on items. I do need to dry brush the infantry bases again!

I may add to these at a later date but have enough for a game, at the moment.