The Marsh of uneven ground (but not impassable)

If this was LotR there would be dead faces...

Another piece of resin terrain I purchased from Fernvale scenics was the resin marsh base.  I wanted a piece of "bad going" terrain that was obviously rough ground but not bordering into impassable.  A brackish salt marsh fits that description exactly.  The piece is roughly circular and 20 cm wide and the resin was a nice bright safety orange colour.  A quick black undercoat fixed that.

Seeing that I had recently got an air compressor and air brush I was eager to try it out.  The marsh would be my second thing to paint.  For the water sections I used Vallejo Game Colour Scurf Green.  Then on the land section I used cheap craft paints and painted all the land a light tan (to show the blighted ground in which nothing but evil grows).  Then in more the central land areas I highlighted with a darker brown (where something might grow) using just the airbrush.  The seamless transitions between colours you can achieve with an airbrush are almost magical.  There can be (if done right) almost no line between the colours, just a change from one colour to another.  Think the ultimate wet blending technique but in 10 seconds.

With the colours (all three of them) sorted it was time to detail the marsh.  Originally I was going to keep things pretty plain but the wife rebuked me into action.  So the plan was to add water reeds (something I've never done), water effects and lastly some clumping foliage (which I had just purchased).

Water reeds

Knowing I wanted to do water reeds didn't help with the making of them.  My first few attempts with PVA glue were a little below total failure.  I tried putting down a blob of PVA glue and standing the reeds up in it but they just fell over.  So a quick trip to the googlesphere and youtube land was needed to see how it was done.  The most used technique is to twist the bunch of fibre together, put a drop of superglue on the bunch and trim as needed.  I put the superglue in the middle of the bunch and then cut the bunch in two so I would have two reeds of the size I wanted.  To add them to the march base I drilled out small holes and glued them in with PVA glue.  As I wanted this terrain to be playable I didn't put in too many reeds.  I needed space for the figures to be placed on.  Much more in the school of representative terrain than realistic terrain.  Covering the marsh in reeds and grass would look much better but then the piece would be more an impassable feature rather than a "rough going" type.  Seeing how nice the reeds I later purchased a pack of three colours of reeds for the next project.  Really it was just an excuse to buy more terrain making materials.

For the water effect it was back to my new friend Liquid Gloss.  For more on this two part resin have a read of my previous blog post on it.  I was counting on the viscosity of the resin to stop the resin from running off the sides of the water ways.  To hedge my bets on this I made sure that the resin was poured only 1-2mm thick.  In the ponds it was more at the 2mm level and at the edges I scraped/brushed it on very thinly.  Also the day was a bit cool which helped keep the resin quite tacky.  Since the water reeds were in the water I had to be very careful not to get any resin on them.  I had one slight failure and got some resin on a reed but in all it worked out.

Lastly I used some of the new clumping flock to add small bushes on the edges of the water.  These were glued on with PVA glue.  Again I went with only a few bits to keep the amount of usable space on the piece to a maximum.

Every bit of painting or piece of terrain I make I have a mind's eye view of the end result.  This was one of the few that the reality and idea came very close.