About Me

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My name is Gavin McClements. I am a wargamer and family man, living in Los Gatos, which is a suburb of San Jose, CA. Building terrain is one of my favorite aspects of the wargaming hobby - in fact, lately I've become more interested in making my battlefields "pop" than in actually playing.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Building 6mm Bocage Hedgerows with popsicle sticks and clay, Part 2

A quick link to Part 1.

Before I show you the rest of my project, let me say that I love seeing new products, and Shawn Morris at the Terrain Studio has some very cool Youtube tutorials (his latest seems to be this amazing WW2 European field for 15mm; see below).

Skip to 2:30 to see a walkthrough of some items from Scenic Express that look like they might be fun to use.  4:20 is where he talks about the plowed fields - I bought 2 on this recommendation and am looking forward to seeing them in action.


Back to the Hedges!

Here are the Hedgerows with 2 layers of paint: Beastial Brown and Graveyard Earth. The third, lighter color was Country Tan by Apple Barrel - I've never really been happy with the highlight color to go onto the Earth color. Khaki was recommended to me, but this was what I had on hand. I also hit the scouring sponges with a bit of English Ivy color, also from AB.
As you can see, the sand that I sprinkled on during the clay phase is mostly still there. The primer I painted on was quite thick, and basically glopped it on. The rocks are highlighted with 2 colors of gray.

Finally, the fun part. I mixed up a few different colors of flock, including Woodland Scenic's Green Grass, and some tans, browns, and an Earth mix. A 50/50 water/PVA solution is the usual suspect here:



The English Ivy, once dried, barely showed. I hope to go back with a lighter Leaf color just as an accent.
You can clearly see that there was indeed shrinkage with the clay, and it is evident on many of the ends of the hedgerows. This is probably the most frustrating part of the project for me. It is certainly something I can live with, but it is there nonetheless.

The other thing is that I made some of the berms very narrow. This worked artistically, but when it came time to add the clump foliage, didnt give me a lot of room to balance some of the pieces very well. Still, it turned out OK, I think. See for yourself:

As I ran the Hob-e-Tac along the berms and let it sit, I started sorting the clump foliage. When you pull the pieces out of the package (or the bins I keep them in, in my case), there are all sorts of dingledangles and gribbly bits hanging off them. I pulled a lot of this off and made three piles: bigger pieces (for where the berms were flatter or wider and could accommodate a larger  piece), small bits (for the narrower spots), and the leftovers (for filling in places, or covering left over glue bits).

Here are some 15mm scale shots, with models from Khurasan:
Here are some 6mm scale shots, with bits from my Eldar Epic collection:
Of course, some obligatory storage shots:

There you go. I cannot wait to get them onto the table!

ps another blog of a similar project:

1 comment:

  1. These came out very nicely. The layered textures and the addition of the clump foliage really add a lot. Well done!

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