How To Make Terrain For Your Miniatures tutorial

As always I want to share this quick tutorial on how to
make nice terrain for your miniatures. The terrain ( hills ) I did here
was designed and painted to look and match the Warmahordes aesthetics.
The Hills was not designed to look realistic and the colors are brighter
than usual.



The finished pieces are posted HERE.



You will need corkboard ( optional ), styropor, wood glue or white glue, texture paint or glue and sand, and paints ( use acrylic paints as toxic lacquer paints will melt away styropor ).



The outline photos below will guide you on how to make a quick terrain piece for your minis.



1. I used a 1/4 inch thick cork board as my main material on top as it is more durable than the usual styropor. You could use the packaging type styropor but I have a hard time cutting it to have a really flat top surface. I cut the cork board and the 1/2 thick styropor to my desired shape and glued them together.

2. Notice the light colored dots on the cork board? I inserted some satay sticks to keep them in place while the wood glue was curing. I then applied texture paint all over the piece to hide the actual texture of the styropor. You could apply the texture paints around the styropor only and retain the nice consistent texture of the cork board ( I know I will next time ). I also glued some aquarium pebbles all over to give it an additional texture.

The photo below shows the cured texture paint ( overnight curing ). Vallejo texture paints usually cure to a hard rubbery to rocky finish. Great stuff to produce those irregular textures on the sides of this hill. Now your hills is ready for painting!

3. Zenithal Priming as usual! I primed the whole piece with Russian Green primer ( preferably black ) and shot Vallejo White Surface Primer directly 90 degrees on top. Now I have a nice base coat that will affect the transparent paints on top later.

4. Base Coat - I sprayed some nice loud colors before the washes. Washes will always darken your work. So painting lighter base colors than the actual colors is highly recommended. Unless you like really dark toned pieces.

5. Dry brushed the main colors of the aquarium pebbles and the highlights. The photo below shows the pieces with highlights. The pieces are now ready for the washes.

6. Last step was to do the washes and a Matt Varnish topcoat. I wanted to finish these pieces already, so I discovered something! Instead of doing washes, I loaded my Vallejo Inks into my airbrush and did some post shading! Damn it worked like the old Tamiya Smoke, only better!



Why better you ask? Better because I have so many Vallejo Inks and Washes in different colors! lol

I hope you find this post helpful. Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

Warmachine Terrain - Hills by DC23

Just want to share a quick terrain I did for my Warmachine and Hordes miniatures. A ton of thanks to Kim Navarro ( local vetaran Warmahordes player ) for answering all my queries on the nuisance of hills in actual game play and the standard tournament measurements as well.



The tutorial on how I made this is HERE.



I tried to compliment the design aesthetics of Warmachine and Hordes with these hills. The rock formations are more edgy and cartoony unlike usual dioramas. The painting is also high contrast and the colors are brighter than usual. I feel the finish and the design fits the look of my Warmahordes or Warmahordes in general.



I usually play a scaled down version ( no focus or fury points ) of the game with my 8 year old son during weekends. We agreed +2DEF to the RAT of characters on top of the hills. I had fun shooting out his Khador Infantry with my Khador Widowmaker Marksman. I ended up with a dead Sorscha anyways. No hill could help my Sorscha at the end of the game.



Hope you like my simple hill terrain... will do a few linear obstacles and a couple of forests soon! Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

PP Warmachine Khador Juggernaut Warjack verDC23

Finished this last week. This is an old plastic model of a Khador Juggernaut from Warmachine ( by Privateer Press ) I got way back ( 2 or 3 years ago ). I practically used this to learn how to use the Vallejo mediums and experimented on using Vallejo varnishes as well.



It was my first time using Vallejo Mediums and experimented on some True Metallic Metal Vallejo paints with this build. I primed this with Black Vallejo Surface Primer, did some White Modulation with White Vallejo Surface primer and base coat of Vallejo Game Air Hot Orange. I then applied some glazes and blended colors with mediums for the first time.



I also used Vallejo Liquid Gold ( Copper ) as base color for the metallic parts and Vallejo Liquid Silver. Toned down the brilliance of the metallic paints with Vallejo washes ( Rust and Light Rust ) and Vallejo Game Inks ( Negro Black ).



Definitely not a centerpiece paint job but I did learn a ton in using mediums, glazes, retarders and other auxiliary products from Vallejo. I hope to do a better job on my metal Spriggan model soon.



Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

Warmachine Khador Warcaster Kommander Strakhov verDC23

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I finished this 30mm white metal ( pewter ) model from Privateer Press a couple of days ago. I added a few highlights and gave it a Gory Red wash. This Khador Warcaster Kommander Strakhov has a really nice sculpt! So many little details to paint and the red Khador uniforn is just so fun to do!



This was fully hand painted with Vallejo Acrylics except for the Vallejo surface primer which I shot with my airbrush. I used so many colors with this build as I am trying to improve my hand painting and trying to improve my color transitions. These white metal models are roughly as tall as 1/48 plastic figures ( in military scale modeling ). I never paint the figures of my Gunpla dioramas like so, I just do not feel like spending too much time on painting small plastic figures. I do feel like spending more time in painting plastic miniatures, much more white metal miniature models as they are expensive and the weight feels so much premium.



Anyways, I hope to improve the color transitions on my future miniature hand painting projects. The photos below show abrupt transitions that needs more blending. As always I think there is so much improvement and learning I have to do to produce better hand painted models. I got a bottle of Vallejo Retarder Medium today that should help me produce better and smoother color transitions using acrylics. The Retarder will retard or slow down the drying process of acrylics, thus I should be able to blend the colors much easier much like using oil paints.



I hope you like this post. Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next completed minis guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)