Trench Warfare - part 5.

 

As the trench wae table grinds on, I turned my attention to something other then trenches.

I wanted a bit of variety in terrain and was going to make a catered hill or a blasted wood...so I chose to combine the two ideas I to one piece.

An idle Sunday evening after work sparked then idea to start as I looked at the huge 80m coil of pinning wire I use on models.

Several strands of this were cut loose at about twelve inches length and then twisted together to give a very rough tree armature.

Bloodgor Barry is present for scale.

More wire strands were cut and twisted together and around the original armature to make some branches at different heights.

Two other trees were made at the same.time, one taller and the other shorter then the original.

I also took a carving knife to a chunk of insulation polystyrene and made my hill and crater, glued to a 6mm MDF base.

The tree armatures were roughly placed at thisntime to get an idea of what would fit where. 

Next steps.were to cover the exposed foam with a layer of aluminium foil to smooth it out, before adding a mixture of interior filler AND PVA glue to create the landform.

This tenique was also tried on the tree by mixing some.basing sand Antonio as well, to imitate some tree bark textures.

Again Bloodgor Barry makes an appearance.

When ground cover was being thrown at the hill,  I started with a layer of neat PVA and some pet wood shavings to get a rough, fallen branches type look, before spraying everything with watered down PVA and throwing basing sand over it all...three times.

Here you can see how the wood shavings breaknupnthe flat surface ofnthe top of the hill.

After spraying the hillnwith brown primer,  I turned my attention to the trees, having done the same aluminium foil and watered down filler/PVA mix, I thenfolled them in a tub of ground up wood shavings to make more of a tree texture, I don't think they're bad for a first attempt.

I hit them with successive sprays of grey primer, light and mid brown and some NATO camo green i had lying around. This gets a variety of the similar shaded colours onto the trees and stops them just being GREY or BROWN, as real trees aren't just one colour.

You can also see how the positioning has changed frombthe previous photos.

I wanted the original tree to be 'off center' and bent one of the root segments upwards, as if the blast which made the crater had dislodged the tree.

Then, and i didn't take photos of this section of the build unfortunately,  I bedded the trees into the groundform with again with a mix of PVA, sand and filler, and then I went over it to make it stronger with AK Sandy Desert texture paste mixed with sand.

These were then all blended into the ground through painting my usual ground base colour recipe and the usual.black/grey for the crater.

This black/grey was added to the tree on the edge of the crater, to show that side had been burnt by the explosion.

Finally here is the finished piece on my fleece playing cloth.

This is the first piece of terrain I have added to this set which isn't a crater or trench, so I'm glad with how it turned out to match everything else.

The trees were a first attempt and not bad, definitely room for improvement,  but I'm working towards that. The lack of foliage and branches comes from historical World War 1 photos of woodland which had been shelled.

Often there would be the trunks of the trees stood upright with no branches (or very few) and i wanted to replicate that on my model.

Which, as I said there was room for improvement,  I think I've achieved my goal which I wanted to represent.

I haven't added as many trees as you'd normally find in a heavily wooded area, as I do want my terrain to be playable at the end of the day.

Another piece of terrain down, more craters i think next, possibly some barbed wire stands as I've seen a building guide on how to make them in the WW1 style, rather then the Czech Hedgehogs from WW2, which i have made a few of.

Until next time, have nice day...