Beach boards 15 - almost done (and a plane or two)

Took a bit of time to gloss spray the beach boards again, and add missing shingle to the bay and promontory boards.

Also assembled two Flames of War Hurricanes for Italy air cover, except that I've dropped a white metal prop spinner on the floor and I can't find it. Grrrr.

Just got a little bit of drybrushing on the promontory, and the waves left to do on all the beach boards, which I have to do outside, and it is hosing it down at present, so that'll have to wait for another day.

Beach boards part 14, and a bank holiday.

All dry/overbrushed and ready for more grass.

Today's a bank holiday. I had, given the chaos of the last couple of weeks, completely forgotten this until last Friday, when the Ukrainian QA lead at work wished us a good long weekend... At least she's on the ball!

I spent a fair amount of it sorting through paperwork for my old D&D campaign (man, THAT was a nostalgia trip!) but also got the cream dry/overbrush done on the remaining beach boards, so they're ready for a mammoth bout of re-grassing (yes, again) along with the rest of the Omaha boards this week, in time for Posh Lard. Fortunately the War Worlds Scenics layering spray makes this very easy. I hope to do a test board later in the week and video the process, now I can.

Beach boards 13 - touchups and waves

A few things for the beach boards today - may as well tell it in pictures...

1) Dust off the loose grass from around the bay and promontory boards
2) Mask, and respray the water where it's scuffed
3) Waves/breaking water around the promontory. Any guesses how it's done?

4) Redo the other boards to match the sand colour of the cliff/dunes area.... 

...which means undercoat in Sandtex Bitter Chocolate, allow to dry and drybrush with cream acrylic.
Also going to be using the cream acrylic to drybrush the beach as well.

Beach boards 12 & Hereward painting competition

A mix of terrain work and admin today.

Terrain-wise I got the big hill from yesterday grassed, and the remainder of the base for the Warbases watchtower. The beach boards themselves need dusting of all the stray grass and then touching up around the sand and water.

Admin wise... well, if you want to know more about then Hereward Painting competition, you can, as I have the details up on the show site.

Beach part 11 and some scenery repairs

We're bringing our 54mm Hundred Years War game to Campaign:MK - it's essentially a scenario from Don Featherstone's "Skirmish Wargaming" brought very slightly up to date with chit-based activation. It does, however, use several of the Bloody Omaha modular hils, my 'big hill' and a blue foam piece of castle, all of which need some TLC.

Andy trimming the base of the big hill,
and hopefully not his fingers,

The big hill is mostly suffering from having been knocked around a lot, and also now needs flocking to match everything else (as do the Omaha boards!). The former's been rebased on a piece of thick A0 art board, and I'll touch it up and re-grass it later.

I did get most of the way through re-grassing (again!) the three Omaha boards I need, with layers of WWS static grass. They do look a bit good, I think.

I am resigned to re-doing the lot - the WWS approach just looks so much better! I will produce a detailed how to on it later.

I did also get round (finally) to grassing the bay board from the beach set to match. Essentially its WWS Spring 2mm,. then Autumn and Wild Meadow 4mms, then a bit of scuffing up, more 2mm Spring and then 6mm Dead Grass. And lots of layering spray.

The castle Andy got to work on - mostly involved replacing one wall section that had been accidentally sprayed with spray paint and melted, and touching up the bits where the blue foam showed through. I'll be drybrushing and texturing it later. And for a final step, we re-sprayed one of the Timpo (I think PVC) tents to see if we could find a solution to the paint flaking off. More later.

Beach boards part 10 - time for grass

Back from Captain Marvel - heh. Fun movie.

Furballs! :D

Today I broke out the heavy duty grassing tools.... (and also found my original post on the beach boards)

WarWorld Scenics static applicator, some of their Autumn and Wild Meadow grass, their layering spray, and (out of shot) some diluted PVA and the last of my Javis summer grass. Which latter, annoyingly, wasn't enough to do the base layer on everything...

But I did get this done. Now to clean up the loose grass, touch up the water, add waves, fix the shingle and sand.... oh, and buy some more bulk 2mm grass that's a decent match for Javis Summer. And dump the shirt that has static grass clinging to it in the laundry :D

Beach boards part 9 - ink wash

Plans changed - today was to be the trip to the cinema to see Captain Marvel so we're caught up, and can go see Avengers: Endgame, but Anne's feeling a bit iffy and James has a scheduled gaming session for 7, so that's been deferred till tomorrow.

Instead, I got stuck in on the beach boards. (In case you're wondering about the little board for the watchtower, it's sitting upside down having had its underside painted to try and remove the slight warp!)

Drybrushed the grey rocks with white. The idea behind this is mostly to give a pattern of light and dark - almost a contrast map - that the semi-transparent Vallejo ink wash can pick up. This was allowed to dry and then I started on the wash.

Also dry-brushed the Bitter Chocolate on the flat areas with a pale sand colour. Will probably redo all the sand on the beach as well before I'm done, to a mix of that pale sand and a yellow ochre.

The stack is my little tester piece, as I inked it first and it's pretty much dry. Hence, I can use it to demonstrate what's in store for the big cliff.

Dry/over-brushed the ink-washed areas with pale cream acrylic, and then added some Javis static grass. Rather pleased with that, I am :D Mayadd a couple of small grass and flower tufts.

Beach boards part 8 - and a little extra

AndyM dropped round late this afternoon, so we spent a couple of hours working on the next stage of the beach boards and adding to what I'd done over lunch.

An extra piece as a base for the Warbases watchtower.

...carefully sized to fit on top.

Starting texturing... My hands hurt by the time I'd done the whole promontory. 

And then out with various saw blades to cut in the limestone layers.

...while Andy shapes the stack.

Promontory and stack ready for undercoat.

Grey emulsion about 4:1:2 with PVA and water for the rocks...

 ....and Sandtex textured Bitter Chocolate for the areas that will be grassed eventually.

And the bay board as well.

Some spare 25mm blue foam and a foam board offcut, for a future project...

...for a diorama base for some of these....

Beach boards part 7 - some additions

Not much to account for - most of today's hobby activity was tidying and moving shelves in the studio, and gluing the railings to the watchtower.

But I did pop out into what I think is going to be called the workshop, where the beach boards are, and do a little carving and gluing, just to add a few different bits of rock around the base of the promontory. Also managed to snap the long blade I was using in the craft knife, so I'll need to pick up some spare blades or (given they're cheap) a new pack of knives. I'll probably do some more surface work when Andy's next here, and then possibly some careful application of a heat gun to smooth off some of the edges (this is a trick I picked up from Luke APS on YouTube).

The aim is to have the top flat, grassed but largely untextured in case I don't want to put anything on it, such that any building with a roughly 8' square or maybe 10" near-circular terrain base will sit flat on it. This allows me to (for example) base the watchtower on a terrain cameo that lifts it another 2" up, or create a base for part of the club's Warlord Atlantik Wall set.

Obviously not the final base, but you get the idea.

The little stack isn't glued down (or shaped yet), as it'll get in the way of texturing the inside face.  

This face still to be hacked about.

Some exploratory carving done here.

Beach boards 6 - more rock experiments

A happy Easter those of my friends who celebrate. Been a bit of a fragmented day today, largely due to two visits to church and sorting out a parental crisis (Mum's Kindle - 7 years old - died, and she's pretty lost without stuff to read (has eyesight worse than mine, so the ability to essentially make any book large print is a huge win for her, and Amazon in their wisdom only have one Kindle with page turn buttons any more), so there was much sorting out of how to get her a new Kindle Oasis ASAP)...

I managed to pop in and out and do some more rock tests, and negotiate a free morning with the Domestic Goddess tomorrow to edit and post the podcast. Re the former...

Another spare bit of pink foam. This time I hacked it about a bit with a long-bladed craft knife.
Note: for this you really need XPS foam (extruded, not expanded) variously available in grey, pink and blue these days. The white expanded stuff used for packing won't take the detail. 

Texture applied with foil rollers as before.

And then hacked about a bit with the blunt serrated knife, then undercoated with an equal parts mix of mid grey emulsion, white acrylic, PVA and water. Slightly runnier, so it got into the cracks a bit better.

I can't remember *exaclty* what we have here, but I think it's (L-R in the seven bands):
- Dilute yellow ochre
- not sure
- Vallejo wash over dilute yellow ochre
- not sure
- rather lightly applied Vallejo wash
- AP Dark Tone
- Vallejo wash and a dry brush of pale cream acrylic

Yes, I should have taken notes.
I think on the whole, the first test from yesterday is the winner. maybe with a much gentler dry brush of pale cream.

Beach boards 5 - rocks part 2 - OMG! WOW!

Holy freaking.....

Anne is wondering why I'm dancing around and cheering, having just got back from the parents at 10pm, popped in to the workshop to .... ok.

Ok.

Step back, Mike.  Upload the pictures and add captions:

Take some cheap white acrylic, semi-drybrush on the rocks (the Terrain Tutor calls this 'overbrushing') just to lighten up the base coat.

And this is still grey, which is not a good limestone colour. So.... Allow to dry while spending Easter Saturday with parents (mmm, fresh baked hot cross buns by my friend Piers in Doncaster - if you're anywhere near, just BUY the man's bread!)...

Next step. Take a big brush, and a pot of Vallejo's Game Colour Wash.... apply fairly liberally. 

Wow.

Beach board 4 - experimenting with rocks

Only just got back from church band rehearsal after a busy day, so didn't really have time to edit the podcast as have to be off to parents early.

Did have time to do a little on the beach boards, specifically seeing if I can figure out a way to do the limestone rocks on a tester piece. This gallery is a combination of Mal the Terrain Tutor and Ballan Parkway's methods - follow the captions.

Here's a left over piece of pink foam from the
promontory/bay build the other day.  If I could have been bothered I'd
have roughly carved the surface with a craft knife to be less flat, but
for the purposes of this test piece it doesn't matter.

And this is just a piece of freshly screwed up baking foil.
All you do is roll it, pressing quite hard, on the surface of the foam... 

And presto! instant texture.

Same again, but this is the lid from a Gü cheesecake pot,
so it's noticeably stiffer foil. This I more pressed than rolled,
almost using it as a stamp.

...and even more texture. If you just wanted some random
rock, this would do fine. However, I want limestone...

Ideally what I wanted was the double-toothed saw blade off
my previous Swiss Army knife, but in the absence of that, this
old kid's safety knife from our kitchen drawer will do
(with Anne's blessing! 

(Slight focus issue, sorry)
Just use it to gouge horizontal strata in the rock face. The reason for the wider,
blunter blade is it leaves wide gouges and it also tends to rip bits from
the edges, which makes it look less even.

Final stage for tonight, paint with some neutral coloured emulsion and
leave to dry, With hindsight I might recoat with a paint/water/PVA
mix to seal it even better. Yes, I know rocks aren't grey.