Life after Devlan Mud

Lo, the people of the land were happy. For the Great Lord had brought forth an elixir of plenty. The people cried with joy and praised the High Lord for the benevolence that was bestowed up on them. For this elixir was called...

Yet this joyous time was not to last, for the people were deceived. The Great Lord cast off his benign cloak and revealed a twisted and malevolent form. With a cruelty which only a tormented mind could conjure the minions of the Dark Lord, seized the fabled elixir and took it from the people never to be returned.

A great sadness descended. Those that could, coveted the elixir, seizing all they found for themselves, furtively hoarding the last few precious drops. A madness swept the land. 

Yet hope remained and some took up a journey to find an elixir that could equal the fabled panacea. One who took up this quest found a wise and learned Master (The Source ). Thus spoke the Seer 'Rest weary traveller for I can aid you, search no more'. 

Lo. The truth was revealed, an alternative existed and the traveller cried out in exultation....

Okay this may be old news but I only discovered it about a couple of months ago. So to me its one those best kept secret things but no more. I was mighty happy when I discovered that there was a viable alternative to Devlan Mud. 

I first read about it on 'From the Warp' (follow the link above), and when I Googled about it a bit more it seems the Warhammer communities were well aware that the Army Painter Strong Tone was similar to Devlan Mud and made a good substitute. Here's a little example..

     
For the record Army Painter Dark Tone is equivalent to Badab Black.

Purchased mine from North Star.              
  

Trouble with Trees

It's been one of frustrating times on the wargaming front. Do you ever start a project (or a project within a project?) and it does not go quite according to plan? I decided to start making trees for the Brecourt Manor boards over the weekend and in my minds eye I knew exactly how they would turn out, or so I thought!!!

Now I've mentioned previously I'm using the woodland scenic trees for the bases, for two reasons mainly; I've used them before and I think they are okay; they are easily attainable from local shops should I need more foliage/armatures etc.. Plus of course the tree armature plugs into the base and this meant I was able to adapt them to make them removable from the boards should I so wish. So it begins.....

So I sat down with armatures and clump foliage intending to spend Saturday afternoon making the twenty or so trees I need for the boards. Firstly I decided to apply the clump foliage with superglue. I had previously used Woodland Scenics own Hob-e-Tac glue and was not particularly impressed. It quickly became apparent that the superglue was great for holding the foliage BUT I was going to need a lot of it and it was not very cost effective. So I turned to the Hob-e-Tac. What I produced was this;

Now I was not too happy with the result and since I wanted to build up the amount of foliage on each tree, I was not too sure Hob-e-Tac would be upto the job. So I considered bulking out the tree with a 'packing' material. I considered using steel wool and then gluing extra foliage to that. Now I couldn't find the steel wool but did find a few pieces of rubberised horsehair which I had bought from Antenociti's Workshop a couple of years back. I had intended to experiment with it for making hedgerows but settled on using clump foliage instead. So I added it to a couple of the armatures;

This one had no clump foliage added, but on another a stripped back the clump foliage and added the horsehair over that.

In each case I used PVA glue to stick the horsehair to the armature. Now I had a dilemma. How to stick the foliage to it and what foliage to use. Now if you are UK based (and probably a few who are not will know the company I'm referring to, judging by a few TM posts I read over the weekend), you will be aware of the 'Last Valley' terrain. Never bought any of it myself, but see it quite a lot at shows and the club, 'Wyvern Wargamers', has quite a bit of this terrain. So looking at my trees thats what came to mind. So from what I could remember of that terrain the trees seem to be horsehair covered with flock.

So a hunt on the internet and I found a few references on model making/railway forums to using hairspray to fix the flock to the rubberised horsehair. Then I spotted this which I should have remembered markswargaming-anythingbutaone. Mark's very fine tutorial goes into detail about making some boards for Saga and using hairspray has an adhesive to hold the flock. Can also be found here saga-scenics. So grabbed my can of cheap hairspray (no laughing please, gentleman) and sprayed away. I also used Daler & Rowney fixative (just because I could) and then sprayed the tree with Woodland Scenic Cement glue. I was not entirely convinced hairspray would hold the flock. So I was left with this;

It was rushed and a little bit messy. It will need tidying up. I also did not paint the trunk. Mainly because they are not really noticeable when being used and the area around it will be covered in foliage/flock. But I was not entirely happy, it looked like a clump on a stick. So having already glued rubberised horsehair to four other trees I ripped it all off and started again. This time I was a bit more selective in placement of the horsehair.

I have, after spending a few minutes looking at real trees, placed the horsehair much more carefully on each individual branch rather than covering the whole tree, also painted the trunk though it may not be obvious in the photo. Flock was applied as before but no glue used this time. I did three trees in this fashion and this was the result;

Please ignore detritus in the background.

Now I have been round these trees with a pair of scissors to trim away any straggly pieces of horsehair both before and after flocking.

Now follows a comparison shot the two different types of trees;

See what I mean about the one on the left looking clumpy? The second batch I feel look more realistic, and I'm far happier with them.

Now I hadn't used glue on these three trees since the Woodland Scenic spray cement can be messy. So a further trawl of the internet brought up this trouble at the mill, another excellent tree tutorial but that led me to this Treemendus Models. So I have ordered some of the glue to give it a go, after the good reviews on Trouble at the Mill.

So trees with rubberised horsehair for the foliage it is. A couple of things to mention before I finish. I did spray the horsehair black before applying the tree. The stuff I had was a light brown colour, so I dusted it with black spray paint, rather than smother it. The tree armatures I sprayed grey with Halfords grey primer. Then washed with Devlan Mud, followed by Thaka Green, drybrushed with Rotting Flesh and Catachan Green and a final wash with Badab Black. I'm using up my old GW paints on terrain. I was just trying to achieve the grey/green colour that most bark seems to be (at least in the UK).

Horsehair can be found at these suppliers;

Treemendus models

Antenocitis Workshop

4Dmodelshop

Unless you know a re-upholesterers. Thats it for now, more to follow.

    

Building Brecourt Manor ...Part 7

More of a general update, this post. The sandbags have been painted;

At the moment they are probably 'nearly' finished. Once the ground work is completed I will see how they look and maybe add some more detail, to the colour. I airbrushed the airbags which speeded up the process; first Vallejo Air, 'Khaki Brown', then 'Sand Yellow'. I then applied a wash borrowed from Forge Worlds 'Modelling Masterclass Volume 1'. This consisted of mixing Vallejo Flat Brown (substituted for Scorched Brown, which I have run out of), with Brown and Yellow Ink. The book does not give a ratio so a did roughly one third of each*. Then added Klear floor polish (so beloved by aircraft modellers, for use on their aircraft not their floors!*) to thin it out. N.B. Klear is now called Pledge Multi Surface Wax in the UK.

Never used the original 'Klear', but this new version works just the same; dries clear with a slight gloss finish. Its basically a cheap gloss varnish! Don't worry about the nice fresh pine smell that wears off once it has dried. The sandbags were then drybrushed with Vallejo 'Dark Sand' and finally a glaze of 'Flat Earth' was applied over them. The glaze was to pull the colours together. The base area around the sandbags was tidied up with the base colour to hide any over zealous airbrushing.

The ends of styrofoam which will serve has the base for the hedge row banks have been capped off.

I used thin plasticard cut and shaped to fit. I did have to slice away a thin piece of the styrofoam to fit the plasticard. Which was glued in place and then filler applied to hide gaps and act as another adhesive. I should have do this earlier, but had hoped that covering the ends in filler would protect them from wear and tear but was not entirely happy with that option.

I've also added in some more tree bases. These will be for the Woodland Scenic tree armatures approximately 2-3" in height to give variety. The cuts made in the styrofoam have been filled and painted with the base colour. Finally all the boards have been pretty much covered in watered down PVA glue to give them protection. I say pretty much, since the only pieces not covered in it were the sandbags and the crates/boxes etc..

   
It has left a 'shine' on the boards still painted in only the base colour. But this is not evident on the board which had been airbrushed. Not sure why? Not that it really matters, since more paint is to be applied. The PVA has left a sheen on the wooden boards which were not made from balsa.

I can only guess the balsa being more porous soaked up the glue better. Again not that it matters, I intend to do some more detail work on the trench floors and sides. So that its for now, more to follow.

* This mixture made a dirty yellow/green colour. With hindsight I should have added more brown to darken the colour and make it a richer green. The effect is to create a moss like colour which you can see on old sandbags left to the elements.

*Maybe they do use it on their floors aswell. I don't really know!
 

A Wet Pallette

Yes it may sound rather kinky! But a wet palette could be the one of the greatest inventions ever!!!!

I had until a few years ago never heard of a wet palette until reading a very good post on the Flames of War forum. I'm not sure if you can access the Battlefront forum if you have not registered but this is the link to the relevant article Gallery-for the love of painting (Panzer IV platoon); if you are not a member of the forum I would strongly recommend joining, its full of great ideas, eye candy etc.. Anyway buried in the post is a 'how to' make a wet palette. Great idea I thought must do that, so a couple of years later still had not got round to it.

Then when looking for inspiration on a completely different subject I came across this site and an article on how to make a wet palette; Flory Models. This was about a week ago by the way. So this time I had a rummage round the house and made myself a wet palette;

 So take one sealable tupperware type container;

Then add one sponge cloth;

Pack of four from a well known high street trader. Okay it was Sainsburys and I think they were £1.50 for the pack. Cut to required size;

Soak the sponge cloth under the tap and squeeze out the excess water, place in base of receptacle. Then cut out  a piece of grease proof paper;

Following the instructions from the Flory's site I boiled the kettle let it cool for a couple of minutes then soaked the paper in the hot water. Then removed the paper from the water and carefully folded it to drain off any excess. Then placed the wet paper on top of the cloth and sealed the container.

As you can see I have used the wet palette, the paint inside has been there for about four days now and is still pliable. This is my usual palette;

More and more I'm using Vallejo paints these days and though its great to be able to put a few drops on the palette, it drys quickly (unless you use a flow enhancer or medium to prolong the paint life out of the pot). So now with the wet palette, I should have less waste and especially if mixing paints the same colour combination should  last a while.

In all it took about ten minutes to make and all I had to buy were the cloth sponges, and this nifty little gadget could potentially save me money on paints.          

Tools of the Trade-MIG Filters

MIG Productions filters have become my one of my favourite products, for enhancing the appearance of model vehicles, and I've only used them so far on two different tanks.

I purchased the Allied and German filter sets after reading several reviews on the 'net', all of which spoke highly of this product. So far I have only used the Allied filter set. I got mine from Antenocitis Workshop. They are not cheap at £15.99 a set, in which you get three bottles. But I think worth the investment.

The filter should be applied after the initial base coat(s) have been applied and 'is used to enrich, unify and cause variations in the tone of a base colour'. And that's basically what they do. I just followed the instructions supplied in the packaging, and away I went. On the M5A1 I used just the BROWN filter for dark green and applied three coats. After the first coat I didn't notice any appreciable difference, but by the third coat you can see the filter taking effect, altering the tone of the paint. On the M4 Sherman I applied two coats of GREEN for light green and then one of BROWN, to slightly darken the overall effect.

The instructions recommend, 3 to 5 coats of the filter and allow at least two hours drying time between coats (it's worth it!). One aspect I struggled with initially with the filter is the idea it is not a wash.The filter should be applied with a damp brush, do not flood the model. Now on the Sherman I experimented with applying the GREY filter for bright green, on select areas, but I loaded the brush to much which resulted in 'pooling' and this looked messy when dry. I was able to re-work this, but was glad it was only on a small area. So far on each model I have coated the whole model (except tracks of course), but will experiment no doubt on future projects but adding successive coats to specific areas to see what effect this has on the appearance of the model. For example, using a couple of coats of GREEN filter overall, and then using the BROWN filter on parts of the tank, were the paint fading may not be so distinct (areas under shade).

These products are aimed at the 1/35th scale model tank society, but can obviously be applied to any scale. For further articles which can provide help, advice and inspiration look to Missing-Lynx and Armorama. Looking forward to trying out the German set. (I wonder how the German BROWN for dark yellow would work on an Allied green.....?).