Constructing the terrain - Part IV

PAINTING
We picked up several pots of acrylic paint from the local DIY store in addition to the odd pots we still had left from various previous projects. The colors we used were mid-green, dark brown (the actual shade was rather reddish to our surprise), ocrish yellow, light beige or khaki. We also used some blue to darken the green a bit. We also noticed that a lot of water could be added to these colors making them last much longer but without losing their opaqueness.

At first we wanted to give the whole sand texture a darkish base color so we painted the whole terrain over with much watered down dark brown. We aimed to give the terrain a brown wash so to speak which coupled with sand's natural color would give us a good base color to work on. We also hoped to get a more spanish feel to the terrain by not painting it too green but also adding a lot of browns and yellows in order to achieve more burnt feel for the hot climate's grass and ground.

Of course the areas that were closest to the Albuera river and streams were to be more lush and of deeper shade of green as would be the areas of the forests. But the forests were not be be stand out too much so that if we wanted to use the terrain on some other games these areas could also be used as open ground without having them stand out as too dark. So on top of the brown wash we started applying dark greens to the forests and vicinity of streams gradually mixing the color to a lighter shade as we progressed further from the rivers. We also wanted to make the hills stand out more and added progressively more yellow to the green when painting the top parts hills.

After all the green parts were painted and dry-ish we started dry brushing these areas with lighter shades to bring out the texture. We emphasized some of the elevation levels to bring them out a bit more clearly by over doing the dry brushing a bit on their edges.

After the green parts were finished we started on the roads and fields and used different shades of browns, ochres and yellows which we also dry brushed. We then used small brushes to paint the raised edges of the fields with a dark green which was also dry brushed. Finally all the water areas were painted with a muddy earth color and varnished to give it a more glossy and watery feel.

ADD ONS
We also did some new trees and especially olive trees to be used as the olive grove in the vicinity of the river. We also built the bridge from thin cardboard using some photos of the actual bridge we found in the internet as an example. The bridge was textured with fine sand the same way the whole terrain was. For the town some buildings were also made from thin cardboard and filler. We didn't build too many of these as the town would most likely be occupied by a unit or two during the whole game and too many buildings would've been just on the way. But without miniatures the few buildings sure make the town seem rather barren.

Appendix: TOTAL EFFORT (in person hours)
40,5 h Cutting and positioning the cardboard
8 h Unwarping
13,2 h Smoothing with filler
12 h Smoothing the sides
13,2 h Creating roads & fields
11,5 h Flocking with sand
1 h Colour washes
9,5 h Painting
32 h Drybrushing
142,1 h Total