Sunday, May 14, 2017

A Field Day


Huzzah!  I no longer have any study; unless I've fluffed majorly the Masters is finished.  Back to having free time and all the benefits that come with it!
So one of the first things this permitted me to do, was to finish off another little terrain project for my gaming club.  I decided the club needed a little bit of extra 10-15mm terrain, specifically some fields.  Rather than make loose hedgerow, I opted for fixed fields; scenically they look better overall and they are less likely to get lost in the bottom of a storage box, come to less harm in general in fact.

A  fair range
 Honestly, can you not see what they are made from?  For shame if not, anyone who doesn't recognise a 'green dish scrub' when they see one is probably eating dinner off paper plates regularly.  Process wise it was really simple.  I'll summarise thus:

  1. Slice the scrub into regular sections, these were 25mm wide and a 100mm long.   For taller hedgerow you may want to cut it a little wider; 30-35mm.
  2. Apply Evostick or hot glue to one half of one side of scrub strip, fold over to create a double thickness section with a rounded top.  place a book or similar on top to hold in place whilst this dries.  Repeat for all sections.
  3. Cut out sections of wood for bases.  Draw layout of hedgerows on boards.  You may want to ensure fields contain enough space for your favoured units in the design process.
  4. Skim the whole base with a universal DIY filler, using a a scrap of strong card.  Into this surface scrape clean the line for the hedgerow, leaving the gaps for gateways untouched.  You can also scrape in indications of ploughing as I have.
  5. Once that dries (probably overnight), fix the hedges in place with a hot glue gun.  If you wish you can add gateposts or bits of fencing with scraps of wood.  The hedge will be flexible enough to form corners readily.  Trim any rogue strands away at this stage.

15mm Austrians for scale
Painting was pretty easy too, with basically chocolate brown as a base for everything other than the hedgerow itself which wasn't base-coated at all, its' natural green was fine and any bleed of brown on the base of it was not an issue.  Then it was a case of dry-brushing lighter and lighter browns to the ground and woodwork, and greens to the hedgerows.  Finally a little scatter was added to break up the appearance.

Given the cheap materials and the simple approach, I'm really happy with how these came out.


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