Making hills for the Senkaku islands

This week I have been making hills for the Senkaku islands project. The scale of the game is 20mm and I wanted to make rocky hills that are typical of the island’s terrain. This project is the first time that I have tried carving rocks from foam and I have spent a number of hours viewing tutorial videos on YouTube.

Making the base structure

I first of all needed to decide how many hills that I needed and what size they would be. Finally, I settled on one large hill with a footprint of around 30″ wide and 18″ deep with a two part structure – a large base and a smaller outcrop on top. I will also have a second hill that is around 18″ wide and 12″ deep. these sizes will have an imposing position on the 6′ x 4′ terrain mat, but will still leave enough space for the game.
I was looking to achieve some height on the table so that the hills are taller than the lower level jungle terrain.

At this stage things do not look like they will ever turn out to be realistic hills.

The first photo shows the two hill bases on the left and the top piece for the larger hill on the right. I first cut the green foam layers to the shape and size that I needed using my hot wire foam cutter. I then stacked and glued the green foam pieces using my hot glue gun. Finally, I cut pieces of the pink foam to represent the rock faces and “glued” them in place using insulation spray foam. This spray foam had the added advantage that it filled in the gaps between the pink foam pieces.

Carving the rocks.

After the carving, things start to come together.

The next stage is carving the rock using a knife. After watching a few videos, this process was not as difficult as it seems. I also used an old large paint brush to beat up the surface of the rock and change the texture. This process also causes realistic micro-cracks. I then filled in some gaps between the foam pieces with Dental Plaster, which is not shown in the above picture.

Base paint

The next stage was to paint the structure with an umber acrylic paint from Blick. I modified the color by lightening it with white and mixing in a touch of black to make it a light grey brown. I diluted the paint with water to allow it to get into all the nooks.

Detailing the rocks.

To detail the rocks I used a black wash to put a shading into all of the nooks. I also added some dilute rust color to some rocks for added color variety. After all of this dried, I over-sprayed the top half with a light grey misting of paint and the bottom with a darker grey. I used spray cans for this process.

Starting to look like rocks rather than foam.

In a later step I added some green wash near the bottom indents to represent moss. I still need to dust some of the rock edges with a white dry-brush to catch the light.

I also then sealed the top and some land-fall areas with a mud effect.

Flocking

The last thing that I added this weekend was the flock to the top. I used two colors of flock from Woodland Scenics. More detailing will need to be added over the next week or two. I also need to complete the second layer for this hill and do the second hill. The scene will also need bushes, extra flock and some water effects. I will also do some dry brushing to add contrast. The second layer should prevent the top looking too flat.