Making Jungle Terrain Tutorial

28mm jungle terrain

When you're making a Jungle themed gaming table it's nice to have some actual jungle pieces. In this topic I'll cover how I make my jungle pieces. I hope to show you how I do it so you can copy this or you can change them to fit your jungle table. I like my jungle to be modular so I can have different set-ups with every time I set up the gaming table.

Cutting the shapes from MDF

Step 1: Get a sheet of 4mm thick MDF and mark out some organic shapes with a marker. Before I drew the shapes I measured out area's of 3"x3", 6"x3", 9"x3" and 6"x6" and drew the shapes in there. You can see it on the picture below. (ignore left side of the picture, those will become mountains and hills for a later tutorial).

Step 2: Cut out the shapes from the MDF Sheet with a jigsaw and cut the sharp edges with a hobby knife. Then sand them down so you get smooth and curved edges.

Tree bark ready for the oven

Step 3: You might want to add some rocks to your jungle.You can get bags of tree bark from the garden store. They are pretty cheap and a large bag will last you a lifetime. Funnily enough the tree bark will look more realistic then using actual rocks and will keep it light in weight. The tree bark is still a bit moist when you take them out of the bag. You can leave them out of the bag for a couple of days to let them dry but I heated up the oven and then put the tree bark in the oven on a baking tray with the oven turned off. The heated oven will dry the tree bark in about half an hour.

Tree bark scrub down!

Step 4: When the tree bark is dry I take a stiff toothbrush and start scrubbing the tree bark. Lots of dust and small bits will come of and the edges will get that realistic rock like appearance. This also prevents the rocks from chipping later on when you have painted them.

Hot glue gun is...HOT!!!

Step 5: Take a hot glue gun and glue the pieces of tree bark down on the bases. Try to work as neat as possible and watch out, hot gue gun is...hot. I got some minor burns from the hot glue dripping from the gun. But if you want good looking scenery some second degree burns are a small price to pay.

Seal the tree bark

Step 6: This is a very important step which should not be skipped. Take some PVA glue and water it down with about 40% water. Now take a brush and coat all the bits of tree bark with a generous splash of the watered down PVA mix. The dry tree bark will soak up the mix and it will make it stronger, prevent it from chipping and makes it easier to paint later on because the tree bark will not soak up your paint. I water the PVA down because the tree bark will soak it up a bit easier but also because you will keep the most detail like this instead of with pure PVA glue.

 disco dip, nuts or sand sir?

Step 7: When the PVA mix on the tree bark is dry we can start to add sand to the bases. I coated the topside of the bases with pure PVA glue and then dumped them into a bucket of sand. Make sure the sand sticks to all the areas and no white parts are showing. Shake off the excess sand and leave them to dry. Also make sure no sand is glued to the underside.

Step 8: It's time to get the jungle bases painted up and plant the trees and plants. When you are making a complete jungle table I suggest using the same color for the jungle terrain pieces as you're using for the gaming table. This will make sure your scenery blends into the table seamlessly. When you do this it's a good idea to go to your local DYI shop and buy a can of cheap matte paint in the desired colour. I bought a can of a sort of light beige sandy colour. You can also do this for your rocks, hills and mountains just make sure you buy a water based paint because it will dry faster, smells less and will not melt any polystyrene you might use in your scenery pieces.

Paint the rocks first. easier that way.

Step 9: Now paint up the rocks with your desired colour. Once dry also wash the rocks and drybrush with the original colour. Now with the rocks you want to create a bit more depth and contrast so use lighter colours and drybrush at least two more times. I used a grey'ish/ brown color and drybrushed it with Vallejo Brown Sand , then Vallejo Iraqui Sand and last Vallejo Ivory. 

Washing the jungle bases

Step 10: Make a wash of a brownish colour, for scenery pieces I just pick a colour I want to use and then add a load of water to it to thin it creating a cheap and easy wash. For scenery pieces like these it's not really rocket science. When the wash is dry I drybrush the pieces with the original colour to create a bit of depth.

Starting to look like a jungle

Step 11: Now the painting is done and dry it's time to get creative with some plastic (aquarium) plants and model trees and foliage. A cheap and good place to buy these is Ebay where you can get quite a variety. Start with the larger pieces and work to smaller pieces. Just place them in a irregular pattern. I use a hot glue gun and super glue for this.

 Step 12: Some plastic plants might look a bit too much like toy trees. Ad some different colours of green and brown with an airbrush if you have one but you can also use a drybrush technique to create depth. I also removed most of the obvious moldlines and flash but this can be a bit of a tedious job... I finish this step by spraying some matte varnish over the plants and trees to take of the plastic/shiny look. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of this to show you the difference but if you compare the picture from the last step with the picture from the next step you will see I have painted the palm trees up, added some green variety to the plain green leaves and gave it a matte coat of varnish to take the shine off.

Painted and matte coated

Step 13: Now it's time to add the last bit to your jungle bases. I have added some small green flock here and there and for the fallen leaf effect I used a kitchen mix of Italian herbs. Very cheap and you can get a lot of different kinds. At first it is kind of smelly but that will go after about a week. I have also added some grass tufts. I have bought these from Gamers Grass, great service, good product and good variety of colors, shapes and sizes. I mix up the tufts and then I'm done. ready to use on your gaming table.

Jungle base done

With some figures for reference

Terrain: Games Workshop Chapel

It's getting a bit repetitive but here's another Warhammer Fantasy terrain piece. It's the chapel I finished recently. I had a good run and finished no less then 3 terrain pieces.The Watchtower, Woods and now Chapel. I only have the Temple of Skulls left to do.

I love painting up these pieces because you can drybrush most of it and add a few details and weathering at the end and it will look good. All I need now is a gaming table or at least big display board but for now these pieces really bring my display cabinets to life.

The rest of the week I'll be working on my Ork Nobz for a Kill Team game on Sunday so work on the Temple of Skulls is on hold.

Seb

Terrain: Games Workshop Watchtower

Last week I spent a lot of time working on my warhammer fantasy terrain pieces. I had already finished the Citadel Woods set and started work on the Watchtower and Chapel. Now those two are finished too and I just have to work some more on the Temple of Skulls.

So here's the result on the watchtower. It's a nice piece with again a lot of drybrush work but I also painted a lot of rusty bits and some weathering on it and to complete it all I added some moss.

I'm not to sure about the weathering but as a terrain piece it will do nicely. I'll upload a post on the chapel soon so stay tuned...

Seb

Citadel Wood (or drybrush saturday)

Yesterday I had some painting time again. The wife was out and supposed to take our kid but he was a bit ill so I said he could stay with me. With absolutely nothing else to do I set out to get some things finished on the hobby front.

I first sat down with my drop pod and after setting everything up and getting ready my son started crying. (he's 6 months) so I got up and cuddled him for a bit until he was satisfied. Then onto the project again. I got about ten minutes of brush time before my son needed some attention again so there I went again. Now, he was in the same room so he could look at me and I was talking to him, my wife calls this brainwashing as I tell him anything about the 41st millennium he needs to know but I felt sorry for him so I went back and forth between my son and my paint station.

I finally realised that it wasn't going to work. I was doing small detail work on my pod but had to stop and get started so many times over that it felt like a chore rather then some nice hobby time. I looked at my cabinet and realised that the citadel wood set that had been sitting there undercoated for months was probably the right project for the moment.

I got out my large brushes and started drybrushing like a mad man. I wanted the old dead, haunted look for the trees and patches of grass on the floor to fit in with my table. just three hours later I was done and the glue of the foliage was drying. I had enough time with my son to give him his milk bottle, fruit, clean nappy and cuddles whilst the tree set got done.

The good thing was that the citadel wood set is easy to make it look good. it's just mindless drybrush work. My son was happy and I have another finished project that I can take off my list.

Everybody happy.

Seb