Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Terrain Mat part Three

Part Three you say?  I previously posted a Part One, and then Part Two was buried in my Christmas/New Years post.

To recap, my wife found an old Ikea painting for free, and after quite a while I got the go-ahead to make it into a terrain mat.  In Part One my children helped with the initial smearing of caulk and spreading of flocks and static grasses.

In part two, I fixed some areas where the caulk had come off, and spread the caulk+ coffee for the road, and the caulk for the river, and then scattered some model railroad ballast.

In Part Three I worked on the mat by myself, as everyone else was doing their own outside art projects.

I first got out some green ink and future, and made  up a wash for the river bed.  This used up a lot of paint, and I think it turned out to be too green, but it should be fine under the clear caulk.

Second, I painted over all the bare portions of the mat.  Some of them came from places that the flock did not stick to the caulk, but rather more were where the caulk itself did not stick.  Very concerning.

Anyway, the paint seems a bit light to me, so I might go back and hit those with a brown wash, or alternatively plant some tufts there.

After that I got out an old spray bottle head, and a Starbucks coffee cup and made a rather cheap spray bottle for applying watered down PVA to the flock.  I had to make up a bunch of loads of the mix, so hopefully it helps keep the flock on.

Terrain mat as it looked on Sunday
Next time I expect to apply the clear caulk, and maybe get a cheap can of mat sealer for the flock issue.

6 comments:

Michael Awdry said...

Looking good, the watered down PVA should hold everything in place - fingers crossed.

Suber said...

Looks good in my book!

Dai said...

Even on Stew's mat the flock ended up a little loose here and there during game play. Don't think there's an absolute solution to be honest, but the pva will help for sure.

Stew said...

I think the mat looks great! Let’s see some shots with miniatures on it already! 😀

Some shedding is to be expected but shouldn’t leave bare patches. I also sprayed mine down with some watered PVA.

Lasgunpacker said...

Thanks guys, it is looking good!

As for shedding, it is more like... scraping off? a couple more doses of PVA are certainly in order.

And yes, shots with miniatures for sure.

FourEyedMonster said...

Looks good so far. Just my two cents ... if you were to go in with some brown wash it might be better to do it in patches perhaps to indicate some muddier ground here and there. Hope I'm making sense.