Over the Hills and Down to the Sea

I am getting back into my summer terrain projects: the hills and the shoreline terrain tiles.

The hills are going to be worked over a period of time, probably one or two at a time. The first thing to do was to finish off the one that I started before Christmas and I set to fixing the felt to the surface. This was done by brushing PVA across the entire surface, ensuring that the PVA is thin enough to slightly permeate the felt, but still thick enough to bond to the polystyrene. The felt has to be stretched a bit to take the shape. This is then left to set hard.

When fully set more glue is applied to the edge - the value of the rough edge to the MDF now comes into play with the glue having something to soak into - and the felt pulled tight over the edge, pinned or taped to the undersides of the MDF base and left to set. 

Then with a sharp blade the excess felt is trimmed flush to the underside of the base. Any loose edges were then re-glued. The hill is now ready for dry brushing in lighter tones, a task that will be left until I have a number of pieces ready to go.

During the times when glue was setting on hill piece, I continued work on the two shoreline terrain tiles. The first step was to fill all the gaps with some wood filler. On the estuary tile I wanted an area of rocks extending out from the shore which I made using some pieces of bark from the garden. Once fixed in place the bark was liberally coated with PVA to seal it and prevent it breaking apart later. Also since these did come from the garden the PVA coat ensures that any nasty little microbes are contained within.

Then I sketched out the shoreline and applied sand to the 'beach' areas with the waterline sitting at 150mm (dead centre) of the tile sides. There is a story behind this sand. On one of our trips around the country before our borders reopened we made a visit to Golden Bay, a beautiful spot at the top of the South Island. As we sat there with our picnic lunch, I commented "this is really nice sand". "Really!?", was the response. So under rolled eyes I 'foraged' some 2kgs of the stuff in a plastic bag and we went on our way. A few days later we were ready to fly home and the Domestic Controller decided to put the sand in her carry-on bag and that was fine and dandy until the aviation security people x-rayed the bag and took an interest. They dragged her bag off to one side and quizzed her.  To save the situation (and not to be made to look like a total weirdo) I said it was sand for the aquarium (that I have never owned or intend to own) and they were gave a sort of knowing nod and let us go on our way, but I could see from the daggers pointed at me that I was going to have to claw back from this, and I was right...But back to the beaches. I wanted to use the upward slope as dunes so I put a couple of tracks leading up through the dunes.

Once the glue was dry I painted the whole area a light yellow sand colour that I have used on some of my desert bases and washed it with a thinned down sepia. Then it was lightly drybrushed with some Wraithbone white to make it more beach than desert like. I then applied a slightly darker wash to give the appearance of wet sand where the tide has receded a little. The sea areas were given a couple of coats of acrylic paint to prevent any possibility of warping when the water texture is applied. The rocks were also painted black.

I added a few pieces of driftwood, above the high tide mark where storms would have driven them, made by painting some twigs from the garden with Wraithbone white.

Felt was glued on the edges of the tiles that conjoin with other standard tiles. This is a good way to use up the off cuts of felt from the hills. This felt will get drybrushed when I do the hills. Then various pieces of ground cover were added to merge between the sand and the felt. 

Before the water texture was applied the rocks were toned up by dry-brushing them with grey and then very lightly with Wraithbone white.

The water was made using a technique I learned from a YouTube video for model railways using toilet paper and PVA glue.  I won't go into detail about how to apply the technique, but interested readers can find a tutorial here. Once the paint had dried I applied several coats of acrylic gloss varnish. As much as I was tempted to make this a stretch of rough water, I also realised that at some point I will want to put boats on top of this, so I made it a gentle sea.

Two tiles down, three to go.