Paint Table Saturday 22 May

 

Since my post on Wednesday, things have progressed slowly but surely with the hills. I have decided that these will be for my jungle terrain. Here are some photos showing them at different stages of progress:

Mixed herbs and "jungle turf mix" added

Close up

Herbs and turf fixed with dilute mix of PVA and brown paint...

...which helps dull down the vibrant greens of the turf

They were then sealed with two coats of scenic cement (~10% matte medium plus flow aid), leaving them to dry for a few hours between.

Static grass added

I'm still deciding what jungle vegetation to add to these. I don't want to add too much so that they can be used for more open areas. 

I will need to get some of my extensive stock of aquarium plants prepped. As I'm going to be doing that, I might as well get enough done for some proper jungle bases. I'll also need to prep a load of palm trees and some normal trees as well.

While I was thinking of that, I also thought to check what terrain bases I have in stock. Realising I didn't have that many, I placed an order with Charlie Foxtrot Models. I also placed an order with Sarissa Precision for a colonial building and one of their terrain tiles packs (the latter will be good for palm and rubber plantations where the trees will be in straight lines).

This afternoon, while the glue for the static grass was drying, I decided to make some rocks from XPS offcuts. After carving the basic shapes with my hot-wire cutter, I textured the rocks with balls of scrunched up aluminium foil:

I'm not sure if those will be enough, but I've got plenty more offcuts that I can use.

In addition to all of that, I chose to make a start on (actually, resume) a mini-project for my jungle terrain - kunai grass. A long, long time ago I had stained a bunch of cheap brushes various shades of green and then left them to dry. After which I just put them to one side, mostly because I couldn't work out how best to go about using them.

Biting the bullet, I decided to try one idea I'd had at some point in the past couple of years. Rather surprisingly it worked. The process is as follows:

1. Grab a small bunch of brush fibres and bend them out from the rest
2. Snip them near the base with scissors
3. Dip the ends in superglue then into water
4. Put the clump to set on a sheet of siliconised baking paper (or a silicone mat if you have one)
5. Leave the clumps for about 30 minutes, then remove them from the baking paper/mat

That's one brush down, five still to do. Once they have all been snipped into small clumps I can use a mix of different coloured clumps to make up larger patches on bases.