Having not been able to touch a paintbrush for most of the month from Iritis in one eye I am left with a set of part painted ships and nothing to do. While hunting Tescos for a box of tissues (for the cold not the ships) I came across a Matchbox car that I thought may fit with the 15mm GZG figures I have and for £1.05 I thought it was worth the punt. The model is from the ‘Ready for Action’ range (#38 Ridge Rider to be precise) but I think its too large:
Except for a quick touch up on the edges in black paint, I am proud to present the first set of islands for your viewing:
and to give you an idea of scale against the ships:
A clandestine meeting between a cutter and pirate perhaps?
The flock is Woodland Scenic Burnt Grass fine turf (T44) and the ‘forests’ are the Olive Green Bushes FC144 also from WS.
Just a quick heads up.
Dan Martinez (aka Cacique Caribe on TMP) has sent me a note that he has created some tents for the Rebel minis Sahadeen troops:
These are available now from Rebel Minis – got to get a pack or two for generic 15mm…
Wonder if they could be covered in skins for 15mm cavemen?
With the completion of a sample of each ship my thoughts turned to the only scenery I could come up with at the time – Islands. Since then I have thought of forts, whirlpools and the odd rock or two but what the heck a large rock will keep me going.
A long time ago, I had seen both the Litko islands and Galeforce 9 ones but neither seamed suitable to my eyes so out came the pink foam and hot wire cutter. Now this foam has been sat on top of the cupboard for a long while and has gotten a little battered it was a close match to the height of the ships as can be seen in this picture. As a base height for the top of the mountains / hills this will be fine but some things (volcano anyone) and beaches will require a little application of the hot wire.
Starting with a reasonably large island chain, I marked out the edges with a felt pen marking each area with a ‘B’ for beach or ‘M’ for mountains so I can carve bits out and shape the hills from the same area.
Sorry about the colour – no idea what has happened to the white balance – the foam is pink in real life.
Has I have no hot knife, I decided to carve each area out allowing me to trim the thickness of the beach areas and to carve hills out of the same piece of foam. I put a mark on each join (see below) to allow line up after sanding. This shows the above island in its constituent parts and the beaches thined down:
To simplify cutting the beaches and to change heights of other Islands I used the felt pen to mark around the block and act as a cutting guide:
To build up extra height, I used two cocktail sticks to hold the blocks together before cutting. Note I did not use glue at this stage as my hot wire cutter can only just cut the glue when dried (and I only have one spare wire at the moment):
Though the hot wire created a smooth area in places, I used sandpaper to smooth to cuts and round the tops of mountains as the mood took me. This was when the markers put on earlier came to fore and allowed me to line the hills back up again in seconds. To hold the island together (and create a small shallow water area) I mounted the parts on a sheet of plasticard and drew around the island to give me a cutting guide:
The best glue I have found for sticking the parts together is wood glue – I roughen the plasticard first to give something for the glue to grip to. I have also found that weight helps to create a solid no warp bond – leave overnight to dry:
I use Sandtex wall paint as the first coat of paint (smooth version) as it helps give a hard coat to resist damage while playing. The other advantage is that the paint sticks well to the plasticard and alows painting later with acrylics. Once dry, I coat with a mix of grey, black and white acrylic paint (currently using Anitas craft paint – 99p a tube from ‘The Range’) blending the colours in a wet brush technique:
Note I slipped up here on the small test Island – I did not paint the white plasticard with the sandtex but learnt and covered all the other bases. Once the base coat was complete I further dry brush of white, grey, black and brown gives me the type of Island I am after (though the wife wants brown mountains) and a quick flock completes the land. Water was a bit of a problem until I found a bottle of Sea Blue (slight green tinge) hat mixes well with white to give various waves and sea patterns.
A quick coat of matt varnish gives me a solid island that is suitable for use across any age and sea!
