Paint Table Saturday 29 May

 I'm getting there with the trees. On Thursday I basecoated the trunks and branches with various brown shades. I didn't do anything yesterday as I was out shopping for most of the day, but today saw some real progress. All of them have now been drybrushed and I have also painted the coconuts on the coconut palms and some emerging leaves at the tops of the chunky-trunk palms .

I have also spent a while sorting out the palm foliage. It actually took a good few hours - for some of the palms there are 4 or 5 separate pieces per tree! I've put the foliage for the chunky-trunk palms onto the peg boards ready for spraying.

I'm not entirely happy with the cheapo deciduous and conifer trees as they are. Adding the acrylic caulk was a pain in the proverbial (as was painting them). I'll use the ones I've done, but will probably put them in the middle of clumps so they aren't so visible. With one type, I found that the armature hadn't been properly prepped and branches were attached to each other (not by glue - this was how they were cast).

I grabbed the rest of the trees from those batches and removed the foliage (soak in hot soapy water for a while to soften the glue and then pluck the clumps off). I then snipped the not-properly-prepped armatures to free the branches. This is what I ended up with:

Today (in between bouts of drybrushing palm trees) I decided to see what other plastic armature trees I had lurking about. I found a few different batches, and removed the foliage from them:

One type from this set needed snipping:

Tomorrow I will probably be dunking the foliage on the non-palm trees I have just painted to seal the flock in. I'll have to jury-rig something to hold them while the excess drips off. Hopefully I will also be able to make a start on spraying the palm and jungle plant foliage pieces - the weather for the next few days looks good on that front.

Shopping

Various internet orders have arrived over the last couple of days.

Charlie Foxtrot Models

Lots of MDF terrain bases!

Each set densely covers about 18" x 18", so that should give me enough for 3 foot square.

They very helpfully engrave one piece in each set with the set number.

Pond bases. I'm not sure if I'll use the acrylic inserts with these; I'll probably use water effects instead. The top "ring" is separate, which is quite handy as you can put it onto any large base; I'm surprised that nobody has suggested selling them separately.

Warbases

Some 25mm bases, some "washers/rings" for 25mm bases and some regiment trays. The regiment trays will be for holding bases of kunai grass and other vegetation which I intend to be removable. The rings will be added to larger bases where I want to be able to remove some vegetation to allow figures to be placed in terrain. You see, there is some method in my madness.. Only some, mind you!

Rails of Sheffield

Another Woodland Scenics rock mould and some Noch/Gaugemaster fine leaves.

Yesterday's Shopping Trip

More Woodland Scenics rock moulds, some oil paints and thinners, a rigger brush, AP Goblin Green spray and some thick wire for foam cutting. I plan to try the thick wire with one of my cheapo foam cutters to see how well it works for gouging. Missing from the photo are some pack of texture foam from 4D Modelshop and some 10mm styrofoam sheets. Oh, and a copy of Stargrave...

Now that I have all these rock moulds, I should think about using them to make some plaster rocks. That can probably wait until I've made some more progress on the jungle terrain.