Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Winter Trees

The full effect

Last year, I picked up a white hex mat with snow effects from Hotz Mats. It's a fine mat and as good as any that that company have produced.  But adding my usual trees to it, all of which are deciduous efforts in green and tans, made it look very odd. With that in mind, I decided to experiment with some bare limbed trees. 

This a Woodland Scenic tree armature stuck to an MDF base with some texturing added. This was then painted brown, dry brushed white with some Constables Snow. I gave the armature a drybrush of white as well which brought up the texture.  


Some PVA daubed on the branches

After that I added some dollops of PVA to the branches and the base and dunked the whole lot in a tub of "Snow" from Army Painter. I'm in two minds about this actually.  I think the snow on the ground looks very well, but I'm not sure about the snow on the branches. 


Branches unadorned 

This is an armature with snow on the base and a drybrush of white on the boughs. I was thinking of adding heavier solid blocks of white paint along the tops of the branches.



More like this

Either way, I'll be varnishing the result within an inch of their lives, but I think the paint version might be more resistant to the vicissitudes of campaigning. 

3 comments:

  1. I actually like the none snow on branches version the most. The snow on the base has a good enough effect

    Ian

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  2. Very nice - would be great for a refight of Eylau!

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  3. Good work! Its been over a decade since I did a winter game. (Image flashes through my mind of 3 men and the city of Quebec crammed into a hatchback driving through hubcap deep snow on the way to sunny Pennsylvania.)

    The snow on the branches are good if its snowing during the game and there isn't much wind, but around here it most of it gets blown off before long. I'd go with the bare one and add a few evergreens.

    Save some armatures for some fall foliage trees to complete the set!

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