Since we play west front and Normandy, bocage is needed! I like doing things myself and I had a look around the interwebz for some ideas.So I found a video on YouTube about making your own clump foliage, didn't seem to be that difficult:
- A blender ~€10
- A piece of old foam, from a mattress or similar. €10 for a brand new, my test batch used about 1/30 of it.
- Paint €30 (got some big jugs, it will be used for more terrain features)
- Glue, I have a house, having PVA glue around is mandatory.
The procedure is very simple:
Rip the foam in to small pieces, put it in the blender, add water and let it run for a while.
Take it out and remove the water.
Mix foam, glue and paint. Don't be shy with the glue.
Spread it out on a news paper and let it dry.
I made a mistake of adding water, this is not needed. It will only increase the drying time, which was about a week for me.
The result? Very much like the foliage from Gale Force Nine I bought.
My next batch is on the way, playing around with the colors a little bit. I will try to make some yellow/orange/red to create some nice markers for destroyed tanks.
If you are having plans on building a lot of bocage terrain or maybe a lot of trees, get a blender and some foam and make it yourself!
I have finally gotten some urge to do more painting, maybe it was the finalizing of the Rifle Company that made me want to paint more?
So in the weekend I painted up my L4 Grasshopper AOP, which was a disaster. The plastic looked a little bit odd, very shiny. I primed it up with my good old Vallejo Grey, put some highlighting with a white and sprayed on the Brown Violet base color. Everything seemed fine.
Then I decided to mask it up, to paint the invasion strips. I thought: "Cool, I'm finally doing some more advanced air brushing!"
Everything went fine with the black and white, I was really careful with the size of the stripes and I thought I got them really nice for my first attempt.
Then the removal of the masking tape came, oh the horror when the paint got stripped off with it! Big chunks of primer and base color just went away. So I had to sit down with my good old brush and redo a lot of the paint job and some of the highlighting was no more.
So after some varnishing I hope the paint won't come off again, the next time I play will tell I guess.
Next up was the rest of the jeeps, four 155mm howitzers, high-speed tractors and a couple of teams for the guns. Hopefully I can get these done during the week!
I also got some requests to put up close-ups of the finished Rifle Company which I will also try to do during the week. Spring has finally arrived here in Sweden so there is always something to do outside.
Just to practice some more with the air brush, I offered myself to primer up a friends Land Raider for his Nurgle marines.
