New Model I am Working On

I have decided to start including some entries about different hobbies I am involved in. One of those hobbies is modeling miniature terrain scenes. Think sort of like model railroad scenery without the actual railroads. While there is nothing wrong with model trains I am just not really into them. I much prefer to model fantasy scenes. The current one I am working on is based around the Warhammer Fantasy game I have talked about before.

The basic plan is to work in 2 foot by 2 foot sections. What I do is cut out a section of insulation foam board and make my model based around that. In the end it will consist of 8 sections (meaning when combined it will be 8 foot by 4 foot).

Obviously the first order of business in building a section is to cut the foam board to shape. In order to do this I used a sharp hobby knife and cut about half way through the board using a hardwood board as a straight edge to follow. I then simply snapped the board and this produced a nice clean cut. I actually thought this would be one of the harder parts but it proved remarkably easy.

The next thing I had to do was decide what would be going on the section. For the first section I am working on I decided one corner would have a gently sloping hill. A dirt road would traverse the middle of the board and a small cottage would sit just off the main road. Other than that a few trees and perhaps a fence surrounding the cottage. Pretty simply to start off with.

With this plan in mind the next thing I had to do was cut the hill shapes that would go in the corner. I used a serrated steak knife for this which works quite well in producing a nice jagged cut like a hill side would have. I then had to attach these hills to the board itself. Most of the features on the board will be added later on but the hill had to be added now so that it would be textured like the rest of the board.

The next step was to texture the board. This was achieved by using an "earth color" (roughly raw sienna) and mixing in sand to make it textured. This is then applied liberally all over the board. After the first coat second and third coats may be applied to select spots to make subtle differences in the terrain. Once this is dry the board will be dry brushed in several different colors depending on what each area is supposed to represent. The hill will be drybrushed in several shades of gray to represent a rocky out cropping while the rest of the board will be highlighted in shades of browns, oranges, and yellows to represent dirt. After that grass, foliage, rocks, and other things can be added to add character.

At the moment I just finished applying the first layer of texture paint to the board. After this drys I will judge whether or not I want to do additional layers or go straight to highlighting.

 

That is a picture of the board still very wet from its initial coat of textured paint. I am pretty happy with it.