Paint Table Saturday 12 June

 The pic above shows just a part (OK, almost all) of what I've been working on today. It's pretty much all been drudge work to get things ready for later on.

Jungle Test Pieces

Since my Wednesday post I have been working on some test pieces of dense secondary jungle. The first step was to add some mixed dried herbs to the edges of the bases:

After letting the glue dry, they were "fixed" in place with a mix of dilute PVA and brown paint. I then glued some ends of cocktail sticks into the foam mounds:

They were then painted brown so that they won't stand out; I also glued a bottle palm onto one of the bases:

The next stage was to add vegetation (assorted artificial plants and a couple of trees):

I started that off using the hot glue gun, but switched to PVA - most of the plants were being anchored on the cocktail sticks, so PVA should be strong enough to keep them in place.

I then added some of the coir bunches in the deepest parts to represent coarse underbrush:

After that I added some clump foliage around the edges:

I let the PVA dry for a few hours before "fixing" them (using the same mix as for the herbs - I should have used dilute PVA).

After leaving that overnight, I added some "scrub mix" (a mix of chopped up lichen, coarse foam and clump foliage). To make it easier to apply, I first mixed up a scoop of it with some 50% PVA. I then spread undiluted PVA on the bases where I wanted to apply it, then added the scrub/PVA mix to those areas:

This morning I applied a thin coat of scenic cement (10% matte medium) using my cheapo siphon-feed airbrush: 

Tomorrow I will be airbrushing a brown ink glaze over the more garish vegetation to tone them down. Once the glaze is dry, I will hit them with a spray coat of matt varnish.

I've got a few more bases prepped for some more test pieces:

Some of these have 5mm foam, the rest have 10mm foam. That is to help me decide which is best for holding cocktail stick ends and some of the plants. I might do these as more "open" secondary jungle.

A Box Of Goodies

This box arrived this morning:

And this is what was in it:

Two packs of Terrain Tiles (20cm x 20cm and 30cm x 30cm), a Far East Village bundle, an equipment shed and a water tank. The last two will be for a plantation admin centre.

Foliage Experiments

Yesterday I began the experiment with the kitchen scourer foam. When I checked them today, apart from the top which was dry, they were still very, very wet. I realised that I had used far too much of the paint/PVA mix for each batch, so I took them back to the kitchen and carefully squeezed out the excess, then left them to dry.

The different sponge colours definitely affect the final colour:

Clockwise from top left: Yellow, Pink, Grey, Blue

Painting Base Bottoms

Most of my workbench time today has been spent painting the undersides of bases:

Terrain bases from Charlie Foxtrot

Terrain Tiles from Sarissa Precision

The terrain tiles are for plantations. I now have enough to do three maximum sized (24" x 24") of them. One will be for bananas, the other two will be for rubber trees or palms. This evening I have been adding MDF "washers" to them (my restock arrived). I got to the final tile and realised that I'd made a mistake on my order - I'd miscounted how many I needed and found that I am 13 short. Oh, well, Warbases will be getting another order from me tomorrow I suppose...

I Love The Smell Of MDF In The Morning...

I've also been prepping some bases for the banana plants and for stands of bamboo:

As the banana plants are a little short, I'm elevating them by gluing a 15mm round base on top of the 25mm base. I then drill through both layers for the pegs on the bottom of the plants to be glued into.

For the bamboo stands, I'm doing something similar, but for a slightly different reason. I drilled a couple of holes into a scrap piece of MDF to see what size holes the bamboo stalks would fit into nicely. I soon realised that I would want a slightly thicker base for them to glue into. So, 30mm bases on 40mm bases. I should be able to get 4-6 stalks onto each.

With my most recent Warbases order, I also got a couple of small pieces for my plantation complex. I assembled them yesterday:

Whoops! I photographed the rear of the outhouse, not the front!

I added some corrugated card to the roof of the outhouse to represent corrugated iron. I'll be priming them tomorrow, along with these:

I'll have to do the fronds in two batches as there are so many of them (4 bits for each tree; forty trees).

I've Gone A Bit Bananas!

"We knew that years ago!" 

Well, quite! In this specific case, what I am talking about is having disassembled and prepped eighty miniature plastic banana plants:

I've separated the fronds out into the different levels. If everything goes well, I should get them primed and painted this week. I've also ordered another eighty as I will need 144 for a 24" x 24" plantation. I've also ordered more coconut palms and various non-palm trees (for rubber trees and primary jungle).

As a final note, in case you are wondering about the black mats in some of the photos, here is what they are:

That's right - rubber "Welcome" mats from Poundland. They are great for jobs like this as the little spikes mean that any wash or dilute PVA that runs off don't stick your bases to the surface. They are also much more convenient than sticking your pieces on top of paint pots.