Scratch Building a High Fantasy Gaming Board

[Captain Blood]

Fabulous 
Although you’re going to have more fun trying to stand your figures up on some areas of that! But it is a beautiful work of the terrain modeller’s art. Kudos.

Are those Silflor / MiniNatur flower tufts? They look like it. I’ve been unable to find a reliable UK supplier, since the couple I used to use appear to have stopped stocking the brand. I’ve tried the Gamers Grass flower tufts and they’re a bit industrial by comparison.

[OSHIROmodels]

Excellent update 

[Hammers]

Terrain building of a higher order. More like a diorama. Thanks for the step by step.

[DintheDin]

Admiring your dreamland and your passion and patience!
Thanks for sharing!

[King Arthur]

Thank you for your comments Gentlemen, mots kind of you and most appreciated 

@Richard - the small tufts and the loose flowers are by MiniNatur, the larger clumps of weeds, bushes, wild grass with yellow flowers, those are from Martin Welberg Scenics. As I'm in Belgium, I order my 'stuff' from retailers in Holland, I know that these chaps stock MiniNatur in the UK:

https://www.newmodellersshop.co.uk/mininatur.htm

[blacksoilbill]

What a work of art!

[King Arthur]

Greetings once again fellow Adventurers!

Back again with an update! This time, it's all about tree's 

With the completion of the hillsides, pond foliage and the grass areas it's time to move on and head towards completing the edge of the woodland. In total I will make 6 tree's. My daughter wanted a Lavender coloured tree next, so I set to work on the order from High Command 




Alongside the Lavender Tree, I also completed a small classical Green leafed tree:



One point I discovered with both the finished Pink and Green tree's is that the singular Pin isn't enough to support to the weight, once the tree's were placed in to the ground, they tilted to one side, so I rectified this by adding more pins to the trunk:



Simply attaching metal pins to the trunks with glue wasn't enough, for two reasons, one being that the bond wouldn't be strong enough for the repeat use of insertion and extraction and secondly it would look awful having the bare metal on show! So, I rolled out some thin strips of air dry clay and sculpted some bark over the top, once dry I painted to match the trunk:




Here you can see the tree standing straight, followed by close ups to show how it all blends in with the undergrowth:





Now moving onto the Lavender Tree, here's the leaf material used, once again I sprayed the tree to assist with shadows and definition before sprinkling on the leaf coverage:









With the Lavender Tree completed, I have started work on the next one, this time less full and rounded in shape.





OK, that's it for now people, I hope you like this mini update about trees and as always stayed tuned for more coming soon 

[voltan]

Those trees are brilliant, I like your multi-pin solution, not having a similar board all my trees end up on individual bases, but the spiking them into the ground does look better.

[Digits]

Superb work...very cool.

[DintheDin]

Fabulous! 

[Codsticker]

I agree with Voltan- the trio of spikes looks like it will work great.

[King Arthur]

Hello once again Adventurers!

Back with another update! 24 pictures for your viewing pleasure

In the previous update you saw the work being done on the trees for the woodland area, this update will be focussing on the ground cover of the woods and even a sneak peak teaser of the waterfall....

First up will be a set of pictures that shows the ground cover for the woodlands in their 'normal' colours, by that I mean, how they look straight out of packaging:











I've used a mixture of grass, weeds, ferns and bushes to give it a semi overgrown look. The ferns placement also acts as a visual guide for tree placement. I also added in a small 'pathway', a dirt track which has been created by someone or something walking from the woods to the pool frequently......

After all that was dried and in place, I used various Greens, Browns and Olives and went over the foliage with the airbrush to give it a more uniformed look to simulate it being in shade:







The next batch of pictures shows how the final arrangement of tree's will look in the woodlands edge. There's 6 trees in total, 5 in the woodland area and one on the board with the pool.













After I was happy with the arrangement of tree's, I finished off the remaining two by adding Red Oak leaves to one and then a mixture of Juniper and Olive coloured leaves to the last. Alongside the tree work, I also painted the boards edges in Black, firstly though I gave them a base coat of Gesso, this is great as it's a very smooth but chalky paint that both sticks well to the polystyrene whilst giving the acrylic paint something to grip in return. Water based paints and shiny polystyrene don't mix well......

















With that, the tree's and the woodlands edge are now completed  . The final part and in my opinion, the part that will make or break the entire look, is that of the waterfall. In the following two pictures you can see a sneak peak of it.....





Well, that's it for now 

The next update will be showing the trials and errors for making the waterfall coupled with how it looks cascading down in to the pool!!

As always, stay tuned for more 

[OSHIROmodels]

Stunning 

[Captain Blood]

Honestly, it’s a triumph 
The airbrushing really helps unify everything too. Nice.

[DintheDin]

It is really a joy to follow this thread! Cheers!