Pages

Monday, May 26, 2014

Earth and water...


The experimentation continues!  Among other things, I need to begin making desert terrain tiles for our Mediterranean campaigns in Memoir '44.

I also wanted to see what kinds of things I could do with the new jar of water effects.


These tiles will be turned into two separate items.  One a river, the other a wadi.  The wadi's. or dry riverbeds, are the most important, and unique, feature of the Mediterranean scenarios.  Your troops MUST follow the direction of the riverbed, as each side constitutes a ravine.


I am using the Earth Vallejo effects to make the sand and silt piled up against the edges of the riverbed.  I need to keep enough space for 4 of the infantry miniatures to pass.


I felt like I had to add some boulders and rocks in there.  In my future tiles, I will stick to smaller, finer gravel.


As I did that, I wanted to prep this base for using the water effects.  My goal was to see what would happen if I put paint into the water effects medium.  What would happen with more opaque paint, for instance.

Would I need to use a more transparent paint instead, like one of the Secret Weapon washes, for instance?


As all that was drying, I made one more city terrain tile.  In our last campaign, we really needed more of them.  I will also need to make more hedgerows!


Just as I did with the other city tiles, I used a few scrap pieces of pink foam, making sure that there would be enough room for the 4 figures, and a place for sandbag emplacements!  It's very important to remember that!


I wanted to see how much structure the water effects had, so I brushed this out quickly.  Also, it was necessary to see how this would dry... and how long it would take.
In the future, would I be better off with several thin layers, building it up, or could I jump the gun and do it all in one step.


The base is set.  I tried to get some color in the water, so that the water effects could allow that to show through.


This is where I started to experiment with mixing in paints.  I was very surprised to see how little of the opaque paint was required to overtake and overpower the water effects!


Here it is added to the base.  In the future, I think I will stick to tinting the medium with super translucent colors like glazes, and only use the more opaque colors to create seafoam and water splash.

I wanted to get a handle on how all this worked in advance of my one special project that I want to create for Adepticon next year.  That is, a waterline display of the French battleship Richelieu.


It comes in pints?


All right!  Another busy day with Screaming Heretic!  The first order of business was to head to Games Plus in an attempt to pick up certain critical supplies that seem to be perpetually out of stock in online markets.

Also, I wanted to test out some other items which Joe had pointed out to me.

Among these was the Black Lava.  I was replacing my old Oxide Paste, as well as my Water Effects.


I have been waiting on my Sepia Shade to show up for a while.  When I looked for it on the shelf, I saw a host of other shades!  Huzzah and glory be!  There were all these additional shades too!!!


I was also happy to find a replacement to my Woodland Scenics ivy kit.  Fantastic!!!!


I took some of the regular cork bases that were waiting for some black lava!


Some quick application of the black lava.  It has a slightly different texture from the oxide paste, although not as much as I had expected.


I tried to experiment with one of my flat sculpting tools to see if I could make the same slate texture that you can sculpt with the oxide paste.  Once again, it works a bit differently...


After that dried, I put a few layers of paint on them.


Here they are prior to the glazes.


Glazes applied!  Stay tuned for more experimentation!