Terrain Talk! Pt. 2 – Hills

Once again, shouts out to Lukes APS, Mel The Terrain Tutor and 3T STudios here – they are responsible for teaching Dan & I what we used to make this stuff. Credit where it’s due!

So last time out it was ruins, now I’d like to share with you How I Build Hills…

This was where I started – Good quality thin corrugated card, two layers glued together at 180 degree angles so the corrugation folds cross each other, helping prevent warping. On top of that – blue modelling foam (although for subsequent builds I’ll be using Celotex insulation foam, as that’s what my local Wickes have in store for FAR less money). I’ve carved two layers with a cheap DIY knife, glues them together using tacky glue and then textured using filler (spackle, for my American friends). Embedded in the filler are bits of masonry offcuts, mortar, a stick my dog chewed up, stones from the back of the garden and bits of gravel – basically anything with an interesting looking texture that happened to be lying around. Skinflint don’t pay for texture, yo. I then sanded down any rough edges, covered the thing with PVA, sprinkled it with sand and cat litter, before undercoating black with cheap £1 spray paint.

NB – make sure you’ve covered up the foam in texture or grit or something before you spray, because the chemicals in the spray paint will melt your foam..

Next stage is painting:

Drybrushed up with the earth tone palette I mentioned in the last terrain post.

After drybrushing a basic blue grey onto the rocky areas, I followed Luke’s APS advice and dabbed in a little red on the rocky areas…

The next step was drybrushing successively lighter greys onto the rocky areas – again using the same palette of paints discussed last time. This helps homogenise your terrain and pull it all together, kind of the way comic book artists try to unify and limit their palette.

Then flocking! Jarvis JFT01 is my main colour here, with JFT02 and 03 providing shade.

Wet blended a little dust from my garage floor, spray sealed with diluted PVA, sprayed with matt varnish and it’s good to go! Nice and dramatic, and the Orks of Da Skooderia certainly seem to agree with me..

 

I’m genuinely pleased with this hill, particularly the rocky bits, and it’s not actually that hard to do.. so the old hills will be upcycled to match! Stay tuned for our final terrain post – the board itself…(dun dun DUN!) 😉