Tuesday 8 March 2022

Back in the swing - painting and making 6mm trees!

Yesterday I spent an enjoyable morning  making the first of what will be a batch of 6mm tree bases as inspired by Norm. I decided to go with circular bases featuring multi tress that can be placed on a thin textured template to mark areas of woods. I started by cutting a wooden skewer down to 10mm lengths and then superglued seven per base. Once dry I painted them Flat Earth. Next step was to texture the bases to match my figure bases and flock mat. Next a slightly smaller circle (40mm) was cut from thin plastic card and this was then built up with clump foliage and superglue, trying to avoid any bare edges. This was then glued down to the top of the upright sticks and that was it. I must say I'm very pleased with these, especially the canopy of foliage. I'll be making a couple  more each day this week but you can see below the first four and the method. 




I also finished off the two French battalions for Tony which had been held up due to my bad leg last week. Gloss varnished as requested I must admit I'm rather pleased with them.



I also did a test paint of the first of Simons Fantasy strips this morning. These two strips took around an hour and I thoroughly enjoying doing them, possibly gone a little mad with the bright shades but I wanted them to 'pop'. A matt varnish should tone them back a touch. Going to paint the two strips of Wolf riding Orcs this afternoon and then I have a 28mm test figure to do. Hopefully Simon will then become a regular customer. Rest of this week I'm back to Peter Pig ECW's for Graham, making more trees and finishing off a British Crimean Camp base for DBN to match the Russian one I have done.

Below: Comparative shot for scale, 9mm, 15mm and 6mm. I used my standard method in this scale of picking bold colours out of the flat black base coat and then highlighting here and there. As always they look much better 'in the flesh' at true scale. I will be basing them, 2 strips per MDF base for Simon.




7 comments:

  1. Great looking trees and lovely fantasy figures, lots of detail in such a small scale!
    Best Iain

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Iain, must say those 10mm's were a joy to paint :)

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  2. Hi Lee

    Very impressive looking woods. Sounds simple to make, but looks very realistic. I have always found trees/woods difficult to be both practical and realistic looking. Well done

    regards

    Paul

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    1. Thank you Paul. Very pleased how well the trees work in this small scale.

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  3. Lee those trees are an absolutely superb solution, I can see there being a run on clump foliage at model stores over the next few days :-)

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    Replies
    1. Cheers Norm. Inspired by your good self of course, I'm pleased with the results, they both look good and are practical as representing larger areas of woods when placed on a template. Could of course use more linear or irregular shaped bases but the circles work for me :)

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    2. Charlie Foxtrot do a bag of irregular shapes in MDF, useful for BUA and irregular shapes woods. A plastic card canopy could be constructed to accord with the shaped based.

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