Hello,
and thank you all for the nice comments. Sadly it lasts longer than expected - but now part II of my tutorial is finished. I hope you like it.
Painting/Drybrushing the dirt road and the earth groundsThe next pictures show the paints, brushes and other materials I used for painting and drybrushing the dirt roads and earth grounds.
- As mentioned above I used not to expensive hobby akrylic paints from LUKAS. The colour tones spanned from a light ochre/dark yellow over medium und dark brown to black. I also used an ivony white (sadly not shown on the second picture).
- I usually use a simple page of paper as my pallet and squeeze small amounts of the paint on it. The technique for colouring the fur with a brush is a kind of drybrushing. So I can mix and wipe off the most paint from the brush on the paper pallet in one go.
- I use brushes with stiff synthetic bristles and a wide of 2,5 - 4,0 cm. They can be bought in the DIY shop, are quite inexpensive and are easy to be cleaned.
- I also recomment to wear latex gloves (medical supply) when doing the "drybrushing". You have to hold the area of the fur matt you are working on with one hand while you rub the colour into the syntetic fur with the other. Otherwise your hand will be perfectly camouflaged with the colours of your mat :-).
The following picture shows the paper pallet at the start of the painting process. You can see that I took small amounts of two colours, mixed them and wiped off most of the paint from the brush.
I first stroked gently most of the paint on the upper parts of the syntethic fur of a small area. Then I worked the paint with many strong strokes from different directions into the fur. The longer the fur is the more strokes and more power is needed to colour it down to the ground. It is most importent not to use to much paint in one go! I only can recommend to better colour the fur in two or three steps of procedure with less paint on the brush than to ruin the effect by clumping the fasers with to much paint.
The next picture shows the result after the first gentle stroke - befor the paint has been worked and rubbed into the fur.
At this point I tested the look with a painted piece of copplestone road laid on top of the dark brown coloured area for the road. I realised that it would much better to colour the subsurface of the road with green instead of brown because a small stripe remained visible and didn't looked right. So I changed my mind and started to "drybrush" the edges of the roads with greens an ochres instead. The use colours and the result can be seen in the next pictures.
Contrary to my my first plan I decided to do even the three parts of the road, that would be covered with the cast copplestone roads pieces later, like a dirtroad. This would be more effort and more time-consuming. But the deadline was still some days away and the extra effort would make the mat much more flexible for later use .
So I started to scorch the short fibers with my lighter again. But it was harder and more time-consuming to achieve the wished effects because of the not quite dry paint on the fur.
I used smaller brushes with stiff bristles to colour the ruts. The ground colour was a good covering layer of dark brown. Then followed some drybrushes in lighter browns and sand.
With some scissors I corrected some details, especially when the srtipes of gras between the ruts had been left to high. To cut some fasers away is also the best way to correct areas where to dark colours had been accidently applied to the fur on the edges of the dirt roads.
With the ruts being painted in browns it was time to colour the gras between them in different shades of green and yellow. I used a smaller brush with stiff bristles again.
This was the last step of the painting process. The next two pictures show the remnants of paint on the paper pallet and the used brushes before cleaning.
With the painting done, I took some pictures. The terrain mat could be used at this state. The following detail and overfiew shots show clearly the interesting effect of the different shades of green. So far I am very pleased with the result so far.
The next picture shows my first testfit with the buildings and some of the painted copplestone road pieces.
End of Part II - but not finally finishedPart III will contain some further detailing of the dirt roads, the construction of the substructure for small humps and some additional terrainpieces.
Thank you for your interest. I hope you like it
Elmar
www.elladan.dewww.stronghold-terrain.de
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April 19, 2024, 01:10:58 PM
October 07, 2008, 11:34:34 PM
