About to head off on a family vacation and wanted to put this up before leaving. Just finished this latest rocky wood-chip hill this past week, and think it turned out well. Nothing new compared to the prior info I’ve posted on building and painting these, but still feel it’s worth posting. Right now I’m just posting painting pics, the construction pics will have to wait, there are too many of them, and not enough time right now. Still, some good stuff here I believe…
Here’s a pic of the finished product, just before receiving its first coat of paint…
It’s made of 1/8″ Masonite baseboard, 1″ white insulation foam for the base contour, glued down using rubber cement, wood-chips and more styrofoam all joined together with a trusty hot glue-gun, then Elmer’s Wood Filler used to seal exposed foam surfaces and add texture, then mixed ballast and pebbles glued onto some of the surface areas, to blend in better with the ground cover on my terrain boards, and everything — except the wood-chips — gets a coating of Woodland Scenics “Scenic Cement” applied with an eye-dropper, to help bond it all together…
Spraypaint base coat of BLACK…
Heavy dry-brush — just shy of a second base coat — of DARK BROWN…
Medium dry-brush coat of HONEYCOMB (Delta Ceramcoat shade of caramel) ONLY ON THE BASE CONTOUR AND TOP OF THE HILL (not on the ROCKS!)…
Lighter dry-brush of Delta Ceramcoat SANDSTONE (the Dark Brown, Honeycomb, and Sandstone trio are the same colors used on my terrain boards, so now this hill should blend in pretty well with my ground cover)…
The trickiest part: mixing some HONEYCOMB (the caramel colour) with a little BLACK to create the deep, drab “olive-brown” shade I use on the rocky crags…
Light highlight dry-brush of MUDSTONE (Delta Ceramcoat colour) on rocky cliffs only…
Even lighter highlight dry-brush of SANDSTONE (Delta Ceramcoat colour) on rocky cliffs only…
Tribesmen take up firing positions near the base of the hill…
An old Wargames Foundry Darkest Africa British Officer — sculpted by the oh-so-talented Mark Copplestone — crowns the heights for purposes of observation…
Fortified by The Guides…
Close-up of a piece of rocky hillside…
Gotta’ save the “construction” pics for another day, but one thing I’ll add is that these hills — despite looking somewhat heavy — are actually quite light, while also being very sturdy and able to withstand a decent amount of use/player abuse, while retaining their appearance.