Wednesday Workbench 02 June

 

I thought I'd start you off with the deciduous trees, which I finished today. Last night I decided to add the medium texture foam to the bare branch tips and existing foliage. I used three different colours - dark, mid and light green - to provide some different shading underneath the top layer. Today I added some Noch/Gaugemaster scenic leaves. I had only been able to get the dark and light green ones as the mid-green seems to be out of stock everywhere. I added these by spraying the trees well with hairspray then carefully sprinkling the leaves to avoid the branches. 

I then gave them another good dose of hairspray and when that had dried hit them with a spray of matt varnish - I had previously sprayed them with Halfords gloss lacquer after the initial dunk in scenic cement, so the matt varnish helped take away any excess glossiness.

Here are some close-up photos:

The transition between the dark and light leaves is a bit too strong. Dark to mid and mid to light should look much better.

The rest of the day has been spent (when not watching YouTube videos) working on little bits and bobs that I will need. I cut up some clumps from a coir basket liner to make scrub to go between plants on the jungle bases:

They're quite easy to make = cut a strip of coir, pull out a clump, wad it up and then tick it into a dollop of hot glue. I'll make up a load more over the next few days.

I also cut up some shapes from 10mm blue foam to add contouring to terrain bases:

That should be more than enough for this project. I do need to cut some to go on 25mm and 40mm bases, but those will be 5mm foam, rather than 10mm.

I also added some texture gunk to the bases of the kunai grass test pieces. I'll paint and drybrush the texture tomorrow and then add some static grass and maybe some dried herbs.

Looking ahead, I also have these palm trees to paint up:

I wasn't enamoured of these, but they could prove useful for bulking out tree bases. On the subject of palm trees:

These arrived today. There are 36 palm trees (12 x 15cm; 24 x 12cm) and eighty banana plants. there should be 48 palm trees, but two packs of the 15cm ones were missing (I'd ordered four packs but only two were in the package - I've sent a query to the Ebay vendor). 

Banana plants

The banana plants are 1:100 scale, so a little bit short for 28mm, but nobody seems to sell larger ones. At 2" tall, they should be OK if I add a round base underneath them on the larger terrain base.

I've decided against spraying the non-tree vegetation - the mix of greens will look quite nice, and I will be muting (and matting) them all with washes. It looks as though I might be getting close to actually starting on some jungle bases!