As am I, though I dont know what it means
4) Make'in Mother Nature Proud
Anywhos back the scenery!! Now we'll work on making some Aspens and then finish up the rocks. Youll want to go down to your craft store and buy some dried floral pieces that look like scale tree branchs. Get a color that you feel will look good as the flowers or leaves on the trees. I picked a deep red but yellow or maruen would work also. Then seperate a few pieces that have alot of foliage on top of them and grab a piece that has a thick centeral branch. Youll want about 5 good sized pieces with foliage for one tree. Prune the extra twigs of off the thick piece so you have a big trunck to tape the rest of the pieces on to. You want the trunch to be big enough so you have something to grab onto with your fingers and still have enough room for the width of the tape.
Take some quality masking tape and rip of a good sized piece, extra can always be taken off later. Wrap the tape around the trunck piece once and then add one branch with foliage per time you wrap the tape around the trunck. When you have no pieces left or your tree is big enough just rip off the extra tape and smooth out the joints. It should look something like this
Now for painting! Start with a base of some sort of neutral grey. I use Netraul Grey by Americana. Paint as much as you want of the branchs and all of the trunk. This will provide for a good base. Then use white to highlight the rest of the branchs and drybrush the trunk. This should give you a good looking contrast and really bring out the tree. If you want to add more detail to the trunk then go back with a darker grey and blakc to make slash marks and areas where the outter bark has ripped away. Use real pictures for referance. Heres my demo tree with some highlighting. This tree should have taken you about 15 minutes to make from start to painted and ready to be planted. Making them in an assembley line fashion you could make alot in a short period of time.
5)Finishing Up
Now that you have a single tree or a whole forrest, its time to put the finishing details on your rocky outcroppings. Take a big brush and grab a lighter color of brown then you used earlier. Anything as light as sand will work. Get some paint on your brush and then wipe some off. After you ahve done so, stroke from the top fo the rocks down, highlighting any ridges and rough spots. Keep doing this untill you as happy with the effects. Any areas that didnt get the right high lights can always be painted on with the lighter brown manually. You will also want to drag some lighter paint across the top of the model to give the dirt there a good highlight also. As seen below:
At this point in time you can do what ever you want. Drop on more hight lights with a lighter color or you can use black washes to bring out more details or you can just leave them they way they are. GAme ready and kickass. I personally like to add snow to contrast the dark rocky colors but that sonly becuae I have a snow themed playing board. For my dessert one I use another highlight of the base color that all the dessert rocks are painted in, all depends on what type of board you are making.
*Planting TreesI suggest that you plant your trees as followed. Take a nail or something else thats solid and press it into the foam. This will make a good sized hole for you to start off in. Then press the trees exposed base into the foam until you are happy with the way it looks. The tree can always be taken back out and put somewhere else or stored for when the scenery is traveling.
And heres the demo rock and tree ready for some wargaming.(Pushed the tree in deeper to hide the curled up maksing take at the bottom of the tree int he picture) Bring in the heavy bolters and flamers!!!
I hope that you enjoyed the frist of hopfully many "From Guants Workbench" tutorials on how to make scenery. I wanted to keep this simple enough where any newbie to the hobby could grab some paint and a knife and with alittle practice make some good stuff for his friend and himself to play on. As a vertern model railroader, there is plenty more where this came from. :shifty: