Thursday 4 April 2013

MOUNTAIN MARK 1 PART TWO

Mountains made for gaming with never look like real mountains.  You need to have flat areas on which to put the figures, and the steps all occur very sharply to mark out clearly where climb rolls need to be made.

But despite that, I want to make my mountain look as good as it can.  The vertical sections I've decided are exposed rock, so I want to create a rocky texture on these bits.

 

To do this, I liberally coat all the vertical sections with pva glue and then sprinkle on some texturing talus.  The stuff I've used here is very finely ground-up cork (I get mine from antenociti's workshop - decorplus extrafine cork, £2.75 for a large yoghurt pot sized tub).  It weighs practically nothing but looks like rubble.  Once it's completely dried,  I knock off the excess onto a sheet of newspaper and pour back into the pot for re-use.  

Next, it's time to undercoat.  I've used a dark brown to completely cover the whole piece.

 

This helps keep the talus adhered to the piece as well as giving me a nice earth brown underlay for the grass and flocking.  Next I undercoat all the vertical sections of exposed rock in a mid grey (this is anita's acrylic, 59ml pot, charcoal grey)


And then to bring out a bit of detail, I drybrush a lighter grey (anita's acrylic again, dove grey) over the top.  If you've not tried drybrushing, it's a great effect that I use all the time to bring out raised/bumpy bits on any piece, scenery or figures.  You dip your paintbrush into the paint, then brush it off again on a piece of scrap newspaper (sounds odd, but go with it)  then you lightly brush the brush over the piece, a small area at a time, and the raised bumps and ridges will pick up flecks of paint whilst leaving the dips and crevices in the darker colour.  You need to be patient, and don't be tempted to leave some paint on the brush to speed things up, you'll only end up painting into the dips and lose the effect.


Here's a close-up of the cliff, basecoast + dry-brushing on the left, just the darker grey basecoat on the right. It's a simple technique, but I find it really brings things to life.  That's the painting complete now - time to add the flocking!  I'll do that on the next post.

No comments:

Post a Comment