Finally Back to the Workbench: Jungle Terrain

 It's been a very hectic and harrowing time the last few weeks but I did get sometime back on the work bench Saturday morning.  I wanted to take another go at making Jungle scatter terrain.  I made a bunch back in 2018 that were actually pretty nice but after seeing some videos from the You Tube channel T-T Lenny's Terrain & Gaming Tables, I knew what I had done in the past could be made sooooo much better using the same materials.  The first picture shows the progress on some test pieces.

The bases for the terrain are made from my new goto terrain material 1/8 inch (or 3mm) PVC sheet.  It's cheap, light, very durable and doesn't warp.  One does have to score the tops to ensure ground texture and glue adhere but after that it's a no brainer to use.

 I'm going to need a lot of trees.  These are  plastic palm trees I picked up on Amazon.  They very cheap at less than $0.35 per tree and range in sizes from 3" to 10".  They do require a little work to get into shape which I'll outline below.

This is about half of trees I've painted up.  Why so many?  It seems I need to make terrain for both myself and a certain snowlord, who shall remain nameless.  He keeps texting me saying "It puts the ground foam on the base". 

Kind of creepy.

Another new tool in my hobby arsenal are these "camouflage" spray paints from Rust-Oleum.  They are intended for outdoor use, cover plastic and metal well and have very nice, matte earth tone colors.   I was hoping they would spray camo pattern which would be useless for modeling small scale stuff but pretty much a 100 on the "Cool" meter.

A comparison of two of the Palm trees pre and post base painting with the camo sprays.  The one on the right is unpainted and how they arrive "in-the-box" and the one on the left has been spray painted.  The palm leaves pop right off and its important to separate them.  The trunk was sprayed tan by holding the bases mounting pin and spraying up along the trunk (bottom to top).  The Palm leaves were spray from the top down, which left the darker unpainted plastic side unpainted.  It gives a nice shadow effect.  I think the fancy name for this effect is zeniful painting or some other overly complex term.

 Once dry, the trees get a nice ink-wash.  The trunks were washed with a brown umber.  The leave got a forrest green ink wash.  The two left most trees have been washed while the one on the right has not.  I think they came out looking great and it wasn't very hard to do.  This is also a project that is well served by doing things in big batches.

Safety tip (or marriage protection advice):  make sure you're wearing old clothes and an apron or smock when washing the leaves.  The brushing motion pushes down on the leaves and then they spring back flinging tiny but visible droplets of green ink.  When the ink hits unprotected clothing you have created a permanent "clothing tattoo" of your hobby experience.  Normally such artistic discovery is something to be celebrated but, strangely, a spouse can frown upon such things - especially if said article of clothing is brand new.  Of course, I can not disclose how I came to know such information.  It's all very hush-hush - I'm sure you understand.

Some ground texturing tests on the PVC.  I use pre mixed flexible tile grout as a basic ground texture.  For the elevations I'll used some sculptamold with brown paint as an under layer and will eventually cover with the tile grout

So here's where we are at the moment.  The next step will be to finish texturing with tile grout. 

The Palm trees cam with a bunch of small trees that will be perfect for 15-6mm stuff.  I know of a certain wargaming campaign that just kicked off which will need some bayou terrain....