Over the hills...

[Modhail]

And back again! 

Those six months of me being out of town during the weekdays have finally past!
No more coming home on friday evenings, leaving again sunday afternoon and cramming my entire social/family/everything life in those 1.5 days!
Which means I actually have time for my hobby again.
I decided to celebrate by building some hills. (You see, despite wargaming for close to 20 years now, I've never had any proper wargaming hills, just books stacked under the terrain sheet.  That needed to be remedied).
They would also tie in nicely to the amalgamated Warhammer Quest/Generic Dungeoneering/Chivalrous and Heroic Questing Project that is one of the (attempted) areas of (wavering) focus I'm trying to stick to, hobby-wise.
I will, somewhere in the coming weeks/months, also try to build a creepy/haunted forest, to match the hills. Because, as everyone knows, all the proper quests and heroic journeys lead you to either a hilly uneven area, a scary forest or a combination of the both. Apparently it's where all the "cool" monsters live...

Anyway, on to a picture report of last week's progress:


Cutting the rough shapes of the hills.
This is actually day two, day one consisted of buying the foam, cutting the bases, cleaning their edges and finding replacement wire for the foam cutter.
The tree you see is a test of concept for the "scary forest" plans.

And here is one of the hills after sanding it and glued to the base:


As you will see in later pics, the majority of the hills are rather flat and flowing. They're just a single layer of 30mm XPS, on top of a 2mm layer of foamed PVC. Total height is then 32mm. This is one of the exceptions:


With the rough structure done, it was time to start prettying them up:

Glueing on bark to represent rocky surfaces, and filling out the tree.
After this, I covered the foam with a layer of wall filler. Once dried I then filed it smooth(ish) again, to get rid of the rough spots. (sadly no pics of this, I preferred not to get wall  filler dust in my electronics....)

Once that was done, it was time to put some texture on.
I started with just my basic basing sand, glued with thinned PVA (I added some black paint to this. That way, it was easier to see what I had covered already, it gave me some more info on how fast the mixture dried, and it will prevent light spots showing through in areas where primer or paint don't cover completely)

This I followed with my cork rocks and rougher basin grit:

As an experiment, I also covered some areas with talcum powder, to see if this could give me a finer texture, and just a bit more variation. It wouldn't stick properly, but I'm hoping it will still be visible after painting.

And that's where I'm at now, a week later.
The hills have been primered, and I hope to have time to paint them somewhere around next weekend.

[Elk101]

Those are really rather effective. Nice job!

[Michi]

Very well done so far. Good to see you back in the Hobby, Erik!

[Sangennaru]

Great start! now get concentrated on the color scheme! that's everything!

[Glitzer]

Great hills, I'm somehow to stupid for hills myself and have to keep to buying GW hills

[Modhail]

Thanks guys!  It's good to be back...

It's a shame to hear that Glitzer. There are lots of tutorials online, could one of those help you overcome your reliance on GW hills?
(If I build some more, I'll try and remember to take step-by-step pictures.)

[Modhail]

Remember how I said that I'd paint those hills this weekend?
Well, the last few days the weather has been somewhat... wet.  Which meant no painting on the hills.

You see, painting hills (at least the way I do it) I anticipate to be rather messy.
As I want to keep the living room, kitchen and sewing/games room clean of paint-splattered walls, that means painting outside.
Not something I want to do in the rain, especially not during a summer storm!

So, I had a nice sit inside today with my paints instead. Which resulted in this miniature getting finished:

I believe that a while ago I told you about the Dungeoneering/Chivalry/Questing-all-rolled-into-one project I was working on, as a companion to painting the misses' Warhammer Quest?
Well, this is the second hero to get finished for that! (Number one was the female Dwarf Slayer).
As he is not a hill, I will not go on about him, but you can find more on my blog

[Mister Rab]

Well, with knights like that as the result, let it rain, I say! 

[Gunbird]

Nice heraldry Erik. Interesting use of colours too.

[Modhail]

Thanks!

Cheery, isn't he? Quite a bit different from my usual fare...

[Glitzer]

Nice knight. I always like mounted/dismounted pairs of minis. Where is this one from? Mordheim?

[Modhail]

I like mounted/dismounted pairs as well. Shame it's often so hard to find a matching pair these days.  

They're both from GW's Bretonnian range of the late 90's, I think 5th edition? The one with plastic Bretonnians in the starter box. Back when they still looked proper, instead of current day over the top sillines.
I believe you can still find the dismounted one on their website.

Edit: Just had a quick peek: here he is. And as an added bonus, still in proper metal!

[Modhail]

Look what I did today!


I'm rather happy with the way the rocky faces turned out:

Especially the cave:

Ofcourse, creepy caves like this attract a certain type of crowd:

Luckily I have a knight ready and painted to come and pick her up. :-) (I may even have a monster somewhere for him to defeat, and really "earn" her.)

The hills and rocks were painted with simple crafts paints and simple large flat crafts brushes (a 2" and 1" wide if I guess correctly). I had a medium brown, a medium tan, black and white, and just mixed them to taste. The rocks were done by adding black to the lightest shade of sand I mixed, giving me a slightly warm, more natural shade of grey. I then added white to that for consecutive drybrushes.
I still need to paint the creepy trees, maybe add some washes to the rocks for variation.
Once those last bits of painting are done and dry, I can proceed and cover the majority of my paintjob back up again with flock.* :-D
These hills are meant to fit onto a verdant green wargames table after all...

*: Speaking of which, does anyone know of a way to get a nice, thick covering of static grass that actually stands up?

[Elk101]

Very effective. I really like these.

[Gunbird]

Nice set of rocks.

Other then using tufts or adding static grass on patches of superglue and then holding the object upside down and tapping it, no idea how to get proper static grass. Well, a static grass applicator might do it, but I never used one, plus it is yet another expense.