Monday 18 January 2021

Sci-Fi Terrain Swatches

 I mentioned these in my last post: terrain swatches.




These are essentially little test pieces that are useful for trying out techniques and colour schemes. I played these ones pretty safe because they're for a specific set of scenery, but I'll be doing more in the near future that are a bit more wild.

A little perk at the end is, if they're worked out, you have a little vignette/background for photographing your miniatures in!

I'll do a full tutorial for the actual scenery pieces (modular Sci-Fi) in the near future but for now I'll talk about the swatches themselves.

  • The card they are mounted on was from an Amazon book delivery, so quite robust.
  • The black foam is actually some excess laminate flooring underlay. Very cheap and comes in massive sheets, but beware - it's quite brittle and takes some getting used to.
  • Panels and joins were simply scored in with a ballpoint pen.



Painting was done with basic acrylics, 2 coats for the main colour. At this stage you can add in another colour using the panels you've scored as a guide (blue), or use modellers masking tape to lay in some shapes, then paint in those shapes with a contrasting colour.

These were all done quickly so take some care to make sure they are aligned straight and parallel. You can also find random stencils for use at this stage, like this green thing that came out to a christmas cracker (and straight into the tool drawer)


When I removed the masking tape it had lifted small specks of the grey basecoat, so that was quickly touched up. 

The scratches should always be done after the masking stage, I'll explain why in a proper tutorial later.


Quick wash of watered down black acrylic paint next. This takes practice and you need to be subtle.





What follows are lots of step by step images without any commentary, I'll cover that in a full tutorial!











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