The brutish construction work on the hills is complete. I'd originally intended for the slopes up to the plateaux to be suggestive of points of access rather than pieces figures can stand on. After a bit of thought I decided to go with functional slopes after all as they'd add to the effect during gaming. The bases are corrugated card as I can't find a source of thin MDF/Masonite around here. Once I do get hold of some I'll fix the hills to it, but until then card will have to do.
I cut the bases to leave plenty of wriggle room for me to fix the talus slopes in place. Once I'd got these how I liked them I trimmed the card down to reduce the footprint for each hill. It's a bright if cool afternoon today, so I took advantage of it to slap the first coat of paint on the pieces.
The paint I used is a rather thin watery variety of latex satin paint. As a household paint it's definitely under par, but it works just fine for getting into the cracks and crevices. I'll leave the hills to dry thoroughly overnight before the next coat goes on tomorrow. After that I'll work on ways to vary the colours and shading to get an effect something like the rocky terrain of Wadi Rumm, Jordan, although not quite as severe weathering.
This spectacular landscape was where Lawrence of Arabia campaigned, and the historical location was used by David Lean to film the movie. Now, I have the movie out on library loan at the moment, and I am also reading a great deal about the campaigns in the Middle East in the Great War and the years up to 1924. There's a lot of potential for gaming the period, and these hills will suit the terrain. It's too tempting for words...
More photos of the work in progress to follow.
1 comment:
It is all coming together rather well.
Post a Comment