Snow effect for miniature figures

For my current 54mm knight figure I’ve been thinking of putting him on a snow base.  I have never tried doing any kind of snow effects before and had only heard about some of the older techniques (e.g. baking soda on PVA glue which apparently goes yellow).

Always buy stuff on special, regardless

Luckily for me I already had a snow and ice starter kit.  This was a $5 special from Hobbyco.  It was a “SceneArama” brand kit which is what Woodland Scenics sell their school kits under.

It came with

* snow paste - aka Flex Paste with is a little like gesso and PVA glue.  When put in mounds they retain their shape
* Snow Flakes - basically white scatter material
* Ice effects - Woodland Scenics realistic water.  You make lines of it on release paper (wax paper) to make icicles.

Snow paste and flakes on the top, paste + water on the bottom

The standard way to make snow drifts is to mix the paste and flakes together and apply as snow drifts.  You can also mix the paste with water and then sprinkle the flakes over that.  In both cases you just get a really lumpy white mound which doesn’t look much like snow.  Sad face on that one.

Woodland Scenics snow flakes by themselves

Noch snowflakes - aka white static grass with glitter

The second group of products I tried was the Noch brand, with the Starter Set Snowflakes.  This set has

* Snow glue - looks like PVA and white paint.  Much thinner than the Woodland Scenics Flex Paste and self levels
* Snowflakes - white static grass with glitter mixed in
* a static grass shaker.  The idea is you shake the static grass inside to build up a static charge and then sprinkle out the grass.

Shaker bottle

Firstly the snow glue is much whiter than the Woodland Scenics flex paste and looks better as thick snow cover.  The snowflakes material is ok, but kind of makes everything fuzzy rather than snowy.  The glitter (to add light sparkle) I think is fine in the train world where the scale is much smaller but on figures it just doesn’t look right.  Especially as glitter is either green or purple in colour normally so you are wondering why your snow cover has purple spots in it.  I did find that the best effect was to start with the snow glue, add the Woodland Scenics snowflakes scatter, then when that was dry add another layer of snow glue and add the Noch snowflakes static grass.  These multiples layers helped with the realism.  However the glitter was still an issue.

Below are some example of the end results of the above

All the experiments together

Woodland Scenics flex paste and snowflakes

Noah Snow glue and snow flake static grass.  Note the glitter

Noah snow glue, Woodland Scenics snowflakes, Noch white static grass

Normally I always go for railroad modelling supplies for terrain making.  Pretty much all the gaming terrain supplies are just rebadged railroad brands with inflated prices and reduced quantities.  However I tried two gaming ones and I’m pretty happy with both which surprised me.

AP snow with PVA glue

The first was the Army Paint Battlefields Snow.  This has some weight to it so I’m wondering if it is some kind of painted fine sand.  You put down some PVA glue and add the snow grains to it.  It looks pretty good at just that.  The size of the particles are smaller than the Woodland Scenics snowflakes particles.  With a bit of static grass over the top it looks even better.  It also comes in a handy square container with a clip on lid.

The second was from 4Ground.  This was their Snow static grass.  Basically just the same as the Noch white static grass but with no glitter.  Why wasn’t this at my LGS the first time I went looking!  I’m thinking the Noch static grass isn’t going to see much love.

So my current snow design is the Noch snow glue with AP snow and Woodland scenics snowflakes, finally covered in 4Ground white static grass.  If you don’t want to have a cupboard full of snow products and just want to snow up some 28mm bases I would recommend PVA glue, white paint and the AP snow.

Noah white static grass sprayed down with a thin PVA/water spray.  Aka alien fungus

Finally on a “well that looks cool” note I found that if you sprinkle on the white static grass and then spray over it with a PVA/water mixture from a squirt bottle all the static grass lays down and moulds to the terrain surface.  When it dries it looks like some great Mirkwood spider webs.  Ie where the entire ground is covered with webs.  Or some kind of bad alien fungus.

Big rock for the table

While taking the son to a model train show I picked up some rubber moulds for making rocks made by Woodland Scenics (part no. C1234 and C1240).  I got two moulds, one a single large rock and the second has three smaller rock moods.  It is suggested to use the Woodland Scenics lightweight Hydrocal (plaster of paris with cement) but I thought standard plaster of paris would be fine as the rocks would be sitting flat on a table, not stuck on the side of a hill.

Bare plaster and base

The moulds need to be wet down first with soapy water (to help with plaster flow and mould release) and then the plaster is poured in and tapped to settle.  The best way to do the wetting is with a spray bottle.  After the rock is pulled from the mold the base is sanded down with some coarse grit sand paper.  You can be a bit faster and use a belt sander but it will be like you dropped a bag of flour for the next 30 minutes.  Best wear a dust mask.

The detail on the rocks is fabulous.  Great stratification of the rock which will really show off a good paint job.  In the past my technique of doing rocks has been to paint the whole thing one colour (mid grey of course), wash with a darker shade and then dry brush up.  Simple but when I looked at the terrain setups at the train show their rocks actually looked like rocks.  Some learning was needed.

Great levels of detail

Luckily Woodland Scenics are very good at supporting their products.  They have an extensive video tutorial library (of the "here's one I prepared earlier.." type) on their web site and on youtube.  I checked out their tutorial on painting rocks and was amazed at the result they got.  Real looking rocks with a very simple leopard spot painting technique with washes, followed by a black wash.  I recommend viewing these videos as the results look great.

However I went for a slightly different approach.  I first painted the whole rock with Vallejo Game Colour Earth.  I used an airbrush to do this as the coverage is much better for such large areas.  Following this I applied a wash for Army Painter Strong Tone (25% dilution with water) followed by a wash for Army Painter Dark Tone (50% water dilution).  This was then put aside to dry overnight.  Then the rock was dry brushed up with Vallejo Game Colour Khaki and Model Colour Iraqi Sand.  Depending on the dry brushing I would then put down another diluted coat of Strong Tone to tone everything back together.

All finished

Since the rock is made out of plaster of paris it can't be used as it.  The edges will chip very easily.  Instead I attached the rock to a piece of white coat masonite with PVA glue.  On the base I applied a mixture of scatter, static grass and grass tufts.  On the rock itself I used an olive green scatter to represent small plant growth.