Gaming foliage 2

And so to the final stages of making the foliage. I did mention the need for fresh-ground coffee in the previous post. This is where it comes into play! Clarence Harrison of Quindia Studios uses coffee grounds for ground coverage to good effect. I follow his example, as shown below.

This picture shows the spackle spread on the metal disks, the sand applied earlier giving it a keyed surface to grip. I gave the spackle a light spray of water from a plant mister then sprinkled the coffee grounds heavily on top and allowed the lot to dry. As some of the grounds were still loose after this, I followed up by giving the whole another spray, this time with diluted PVA with some yellow and tan acrylic paint mixed in. This fixes the loose grounds in place, covers any white patches of spackle showing through, and adds a more natural shading to the basic green color of the plastic plant strands. The edges of the disks were then painted a dun earth color to match my gaming surface.

Of course, plants in the wild don't exist in a vacuum: Other plants tend to compete for the same space. Once all was dry, I added bits and pieces of Spanish and reindeer mosses to the bases, along with small stones. The ferns were then bent outward to give a more natural pose.

The picture below shows scale compared to a Wargames Foundry figure. Even four bases of the foliage creates enough cover to hide a nasty surprise or two for gamers. On the whole I'm rather pleased with the result. It's miles better than my earlier attempt, and even with drying speed factored in, still took little time to make.

Next up, my steamboat project gets under way.