Sunday 24 August 2014

455 - Seven Feet of 15mm Hedges? - Done. Fun!

Yup.

Sometimes - rarely - I get the urge to make scenery. Never very often for 40K, but I've found that I like scratchbuilding stuff at 15mm, so I thought I'd have a stab at these with ideas/tutorial courtesy of the excellent Empire of Ghosts [linked here].

I made 14 of these in 6" lengths - they're very simple to make indeed, and dirt cheap. In fact, I spent no more than £3 on about 12' worth of 1/4" scouring pad AND 100 jumbo lollipop (posicle) sticks. Here's the look:

Two things worth mentioning are that (a) I used Indian Ink to 'udercoat' [stain?] the lollipop sticks once the sand was glued on, and it was sooooooo quick. I may do a post about some of the weird tools of my trade soon...
...and (b) that the scouring pads - whilst by no means perfect - do appear to have a blue-ish hue in these pics which is not the case in actuality. The pic immediately above appears just as my camera made it look; the others have all been desaturated by 28%.
Lanes driving - yeah!
It's not just tanks who can cower, y'know!

I should of course note that these are only supposed to be cheap, 'generic' well-ordered-but-not-recently-maintained hedges: they're certainly not Bocage-y, and they're certainly not perfectly crafted, but they work, they're easy to store, and THEY WERE FUN TO MAKE!

Huge thanks to Empire of Ghosts for this: do please check out his stuff.

More soon,

- D.

8 comments:

  1. I have a set of hedges that are half finished that I need to complete. These look good and definitely are a nice and clear piece of terrain for gaming on. Good work.

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    1. Thanks, mate. Taking more of your stuff as inspiration, I've also been making some brown carpet ploughed field. Watch this space...

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  2. Very nice work, I like them a lot. The texture of the scouring pads adds a nice level of detail. It's easy to forget that you probably won't ever view them again from as close up as you do when making them! One great thing about making your own terrain, apart from saving money, is you can add to it later and keep a uniform look, or make custom pieces. Great job :-)

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    1. Cheers, Paul!

      You are, of course, quite right about levels of scrutiny. I should also note that - naturally - I'll be making some different sized and shaped bits too at some point in the future, including shorter bits, corners, junctions and gateways etc.

      Making scenery also has the significaant advantage that one can do it whilst sitting watching DVDs with one's wife and feel more 'creative' than when painting tiny toy soldiers...

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  3. Good stuff, look like the same pads i use, but as mine are 28mm i tend to flock them with foliage, makes a proper bushy looking hedge :)

    and for bocage i just heap up aquarium stones and top with the hedge and flocke liberally.. your basing gravel should be a good size for doing that for 15mm

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    1. Cheers, Karitas.

      Yeah, on my wife's advice I drybrushed and stained sections to create a bit of variety and depth, but at 28mm it would need something significantly more.

      Wanting to make decent, 'realistic' rural scenery at 28mm is one of the many, many things which continues to put me off any serious pursuit of Bolt Action at scale.

      As for bocage: thanks. I'd figured to do it in a similar way to what you outline, but I'd need LOTS of it and it'd need to be more organically shaped than fourteen 6" straights. I'm not ready, able or willing to commit to that at the mo!

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  4. These are some pieces that I need to get done next. So simple and affordable too.

    Great job Drax, you will soon have a sweet looking table's worth!

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    1. Cheers, mate...although I've a good deal of time before that happens!

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Thanks for taking the time to comment!