Spring of Scenery 2021 - Part 5: Wooded hills

As a bit of an experiment I had a play with some XPS foam and some plaster rocks to make some rocky hill woodland tree bases.

I made 2 bases, irregularly shaped so that they can fit together a variety of ways from hidden rocky hollows to narrow paths.  These are cut from 5mm Foamex.  The basic shape of the hills is XPS foam from some foil-faced insulation panels.  I got this from a property renovation down the road in our village.  I spotted the pile of offcuts outside and asked the owner if I could relieve him of the burden of disposing of them and he was very pleaseed for us to have them.  The XPS was hot-glued in place.

Foamex and XPS.

 

Various options how to arrange them.

Plaster rocks were cast using aluminium foil moulds, more on this in my next post.  Suitable pieces were broken off and arranged to give some nice rocky edges to parts of the hills.

Plaster rocks.

Plaster rocks.

For the main ground form I mixed up some home-made "sculptamold" equivalent.  This involves mixing some casting plaster (Crystacal-R in this case, which I usually use for casting my Hirst Arts blocks for dungeons) then added some torn up toilet roll.

"Sculptamold" ingredients.

The resulting mush was mixed well to ensure a not-too-lumpy consistency.  I don't feel I can use the word "smooth" to describe it!

Yum yum!

A generous amount was smeared onto each base and the rock moulds were pushed into position, letting the mixture fix them into place.

Ground form applied.

Ground form applied.

The plaster/paper mix was smoothed down with a wet finger when partially set.  The entire pieces set completely in about 15 minutes.

Smoothed and set rock hard.

Smoothed and set rock hard.

The rocks were painted using the "leopard spot" technique which I'll cover in my next post.  Burnt umber was painted over the main ground surface but the edges were left unpainted at this stage.

Rocks and part of ground painted.

Rocks and part of ground painted.

Next, the edges were painted with textured paint (PVA/ready-mix filler, sand, brown acrylic paint).  This is the part that will show, the smoother inner areas will be flocked, so no texturing is required.  The earth areas were all painted with Wilko Nutmeg Spice and Coffee, then drybrushed round the edges with Desert Sand to ensure they match my terrain mat.

Texturing and base coat painting complete.

Texturing and base coat painting complete.

PVA was painted over the earthy areas and a few different shades of home-made green foam flock were sprinkled over it.  Some larger clumps were added to create denser undergrowth.  The whole lot was sprayed with water/isopropyl alcohol and then a mixture of water, PVA and matt acrylic varnish was dripped on to seal everything in place.

Initial flocking complete.

Initial flocking complete.

Initial flocking complete.

Initial flocking complete.

Now to add the trees.  Holes were drilled and the trees fixed in place with gorilla glue.  These are cheap Chinese trees which have been improved with some extra flock - more on these another day.  The finishing touch was to sprinkle some soil/brown grout mix in a few spots and lots of finely shredded leaves under the trees and at the base of the hills/rocks where they'd tent to accumulate.  It also hides the spots round the tree trunks where the gorilla glue has foamed out slightly, leaving unsightly yellow-cream bubbles!  Another spray of isopropanol and PVA/varnish and they're done.

Though I freely admit that these are not the most realistic wooded hills you'll see, the final result will match the rest of my game board and provide a good bit of LOS blocking scenery.  As you can see from the Critical Mass Games (now Ral Partha Europe) Protolene Khanate troops, these are ideal for 15mm figures. There are areas for them to move on and through, so it won't just be dead space terrain blocking all sight and movement.  I have more woods coming and as "proof of concept" to test various techiques these are a definite success.