I never did any terrain myself, not even a single tree. Haven't been playing for long, so till now a book or cd case was enough for me. Battles were interesting and being rp'er for almost two decades, i never had problems with imageing that that bottle is a mighty tower from which my goblins will shoot incoming elves. And yet...
I sat today i started preparing some basic terrain for myself. i dont have access to any special materials, all i have is polystyrene and some old cardboard. On the photo below there are some examples of a few hours with pva and a small knife. I'm not saying they are perfect, but for my use, that should be enough. Now then, i have the pva drying and hopefully glueing that polystyrene together, but i want to paint it. The thing is, i only ever painted few models in my entire life. I realise, that i cant paint on it without anything covering polystyrene first, but i'm not sure what could that be... Is a layer of pva enough? should i somehow try to cover it with paper mache? I dont like to use paper mache, because whatever i do with it i always end with shapeless blob. Thanks for any suggestions.


p.s. i tried to add a photo link to my post, but i cant. will try to find someplace to make two aditional post to be able to add photos and post it then. sorry.

Believe it or not, you can paint directly on polystyrene, as long as it's from a tube and not a can of spray paint (aerosols will melt it). However, if you use a tube, you could potentially get ugly results, especially with expanded polystyrene. A layer of PVA works perfectly, if that's the way you wanna go... Sometimes I also use Polyfilla, or drywall spackle. I find it much easier to manipulate...
I've never used papier mache and I don't think I ever will... it's just too messy.

Good luck

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Hmm... what would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?

Still cant add any links. I uploaded a photo to my galery.

Thanks Ranger, ill try to find some polyfillia then. Just to clarify, by saying tube you mean acrylic paint, like the one i'm using for models?

Well terrain can be made out of anything really, if you look around outside there are plenty of things. Chunks of wood are always rather good, I'm not talking about the all nicely cut & smoothed off ones, naturals the best. Small rocks in your garden can help make things look better.
If your near the beach collect some sand, which can be used to stick on your hill or whatever you wish. If your not a keen bean on buying static grass, if you get some nice uber fine sawdust (either your local sawmill or petshop will have) mix it with a bit of green paint & you have yourself a bit of powdered grass...

There are so many other things, just use your imagination

Boog, if you mix some PVA in with the filla aswell as water it will be tougher, otherwise it chips and cracks sometimes. You will be able to post pics when you've posted a few times, the number of posts you need will be in the rules I expect .

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"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." - Thorin Oakenshield.

It works now. I also have a rock, made (partially) using the tutorial posted in library.

a good start, look forward to seeing more

Try this link
http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/

General advice is hard to give.
To help you with what you have started here are some tips.

1. The card board will warp when you glue texture to it.
To Prevent or greatly reduce the effect this cut another piece of card board . The corrugation needs to run 90 degrees from the direction of the base piece. Glue it to the bottom of the base piece. The glue will pull the card board flat instead of curling the edges. Use painters tape to dress the edge.
2. Use sand or saw dust for your texture
3. Mix your PVA with paint and a little water. Use a baby food jar or something similar. Black or dark brown paint will work best.
Paint the piece with the glue/paint and sift sand onto-it. The Paint helps you to see that you get complete coverage and dyes the sand.The sand will be much easier to paint. You will be able to tell if coverage is good enough to use spray paint. For the sifter punch holes in the top of a baby food jar.

A friend of mine has some terrain I made with this method when he was a teenager. That was more than 20 years ago.

The dry wall compound will cause similar problems with card board. I use a combination of plaster bandage and dry wall compound before I add saw dust. You can buy colored flocking or make it your self. See the index at. http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

Yea, I'm talking about acrylic

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Hmm... what would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?

Thanks, all that advice is more usefull then you might think.

Drumtastic, i'd love to share some more. As soon as i have an opportunity to work on it, i'll post it. Thanks.

Ok, so here goes pva and filler. I'm testing at the moment what proportions would be the best and whether i should use filler/pva mixture on all polystyrene surfaces, and how will it work if i cover the bases with filler as well.
From the left:
- Ruined housing; filler in cracks and where different blocks of polysterene are connected to each other and the base. Not covered in pva yet, i'm thinking about preparing thin mixture of pva/filler, 5:1 maybe; and covering all walls with it. Base to be covered in [va only.
- Lone rock; covered in bits of brick and very thin pva/filler mixture.
- Hill with a cliff; polysterene surfaces covered in filler, cardboard covered in pva.
- Two walls, bottom covered in pva/filler, thick 1:10; top done the same way as the hill.

I'll propably wil not start to paint it before next weekend. ATM i'm thinking about the kind of paint i will use. I dont have a lot of acrylic one, only few jars i had with moria hobby set, but i have a small jar of vinyl emulsion. Is it posible to use it instead?

For terrain where quite a bit of paint is needed I use Tamiya acrylics. They're very close to citadel paints is quality but less than half the price. Fine for terrain but not quite what I expect for figure work .

They airbrush and spray very well too.

Will.

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"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." - Thorin Oakenshield.

ah looks good, it's coming along. The pva there isn't dried yet i take from that picture? Don't worry about painting until your at that stage, maybe a little browse for paints while your going around town couldn't hurt, if your looking to buy some that is.
Doing brickwork for your buildings/walls may be an idea. The easiest way is to just draw them in for a first.

good work, keep it up

citadel - 12ml - 2.25
tamiya - 10ml - 1.50

Thats the instore prices in Brum, GW shop vs. Modelzone. Found Tamiya for 1.15 +delivery online.... really, one day i'll go to the woods and gather some berries to make paints of my own, mixing it with cheap vodka and old mobile phones.

I'm still wondering about using vinyl as a foundation.

Thanks. Yeah, it's all fresh.
Painting will have to wait for some time unfortunatelly, i'm planing only as far as putting some base coating on it. Instead of brickwork, i'm thinking about whitewashed walls, with stonework wisible on the top and maybe something on the corners, wooden beams or grey stones. Brickwork sounds great, but for now i want to keep it simple.

It will be ok for terrain. You can even use house paint if you have some around. Paint is a personal preference. I would not use a whole jar of GW paint mixed with equal parts pva . The GW paint cost far to much to use for terrain. Craft paint cost about the same as PVA. Black, brown and true ocher are good to start. You will want green if you want to paint grass. I think most people use commercial products now.

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

forget "Proper" miniatures paints other than for fine detail.

Nice and cheap craft paints are your friends for scenery stuff - Anita's or DecoArt especially... erm, i cant link to them, but £0.99p each for 59ml.

good coverage and cheap for scenery and terrain - this does not make them bad btw - but usually not good enough for figure painting.

the alternative is household paint from the local DIY in sample tubs, but, to be honest, the craft paints are more suited: the reason being you can buy them in threee-colours so you can do shading i.e. dark brown, mid brown, light brown for shading ground cover.

that's going to set you back £3.00p... which is about how much a single pot, even a smpler, costs for one colour form the DIY.

DIY paints work out better if you are going to do a lot of scenery, and i mean a LOT.

£3.00 of craft paint in browns and £3.00 in grey's will do all your current scenery and terrain... which aint bad.

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"Melding Construction and Art in Miniature"

Latex (left over extra) paint is a good medium to work with.
If working with a white, it's easy to tint it with acrylic or tempra paint.
I suggest not using a high gloss. It will look unnatural and may not top coat well. Gloss may resist other paints.
I've used this technique and it's easy and cheap.
I like to use Gesso (artist canvas primer that can be found at art supply places) to prime the joint compound (polyfilla/wall putty).
It seals the surface and adds strength. It can even be mixed with paints and joint compound for textural and stucco effects.
I don't like using cardboard for the basing material. No matter how much you try, it will always warp. I look for more rigid materials like masonite scraps and plywood. They are stronger and easier to work on top. They can be drilled, nailed, screwed and glued for more stability of the terrian.
Remember, scrounge before buying! There's a world of thrown away materials all around us... and it's free!

Thanks for all of you. Yeah, possibilities are endless, i've found myself going through a scrap pile in my workplace, looking for interesting bits and bobs and suprisingly finding some. Wire will be usefull, also sawdust and plywood.

Now i have to decide how i want to finish what i started; for example i'm thinking about doing stone floor in a building, maybe cutting bit of cardboard into shape of stones and priming it, and then painting; or maybe going to a garden centre and organising a handfull of ornament gravel.

Drumtastic's idea about brickwork is becoming more and more appealing since i discovered a video of somebody scratching it over dried and sanded filler and then coating it with pva to paint it afterwards.

Can't wait till the weekend to do something with it.

Working on stones now.