Scenery: Plowed Fields

First scenery project in quite a while, I’ve done lots of figure painting over the winter and spring but no scenery.

I pulled the top layer of paper off a sheet of corrugated cardboard and cut that up for the plowed parts, then used cardboard from an old shoebox for the base layers. There’s 4 6″x4″ fields and 1 larger 8″x6″ field.

The basecoat was a 1:1 mix of white glue and paint; the paint was a mix of two shades of brown, a shot of black and a bit of grey, just for variety. I squirt the glue and paint directly onto each field and mix with a 1.5″ housepainting brush, and transfer some of each field’s rough mix of paint to the other fields, so they’re all mostly the same colour without having to mix paint seperately in a container. The 1:1 paint and glue mix toughens and seals scenery nicely; it’s my usual primer coat for almost all scenery projects.

Paint still wet on two of the 4×6 fields.



After the basecoat was dry (and I’d patched a few bits I missed) I drybrushed with a lighter tan/brown shade, then flocked around the edges and onto some of the fields. The flocking was mostly Woodland Scenics ground foam, the dark green “Weeds” colour, and GW’s brighter green flock, with two other shades of green ground foam thrown in for variety.

Flocking in progress, large field in the back, the smaller ones to the left. Click for full size, as usual.

A few people asked on LAF and elsewhere about warping, given that these are just cardboard. All five fields have warped a bit, but I’ll paint the backs soon, which will both pull most of the current warping out, and help prevent future re-warping by sealing the cardboard. After that’s dry, I’ll put all five fields under a couple of figure cases for a few days to finish flattening out. The corrugations of the fields are more than tough enough to take that — all that white glue in the basecoat has toughened them to the point where even with my thumb I can’t really do much to them!

Not bad for a project that started with scrap cardboard I diverted from the recycling bin and that has basically cost zero to complete!

Finished photos in a few days, hopefully. Going to be a while before I get some in-game photos, though, given June’s insane work schedule…

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