OK, so I’m giving myself a challenge.
IPMS Scale Model World at Telford is ON!! As I type the calendar says 57 days to go. I can do it, right?
It was 2 years ago (the last SMW due to you know what) that I took along my Italy, Liberation 1944 dio (my first since I was 16) and managed to bag a Silver medal. I imagine that the competition will be very lively this year, given that everyone has been bottled up for so long, so I’m taking nothing for granted, but it’s worth a shot. Anyway, it will be great just to be there with everyone else.
So that’s a deadline and I intend to meet it…
First, let me give a quick recap on all that vegetation. This will mostly be pictures, but it will give an idea of the amount of work that was involved.
The big lesson that I learnt here is this: THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH OF THE STUFF!
I started with a selection of laser cut paper ferns, etc.
These are beautifully detailed, but also very time-consuming. Of course, if I had been building a small vignette for a figure they would have served me just fine, but even after I had cut out and assembled quite a few of them, it was clear that they just weren’t going to fill out the area I had to cover.
So I had to look for alternatives.
These are bamboo. They come from China and most of them can be ordered on Amazon for only a few pounds. They come in three sizes and you get 100 pieces in a bag. The tallest ones actually have a thin strand of wire moulded inside to keep them erect, but the smaller ones tend to be a bit floppy.
Although they look a bit artificial at first, the detail is actually pretty impressive and with a bit of paint they can be made to look fairly convincing.
In order to help with painting I used cheap sanding blocks to keep them all in place, simply punching a hole and pushing in the plastic plant. I washed them first to get rid of any release agent. Everything was then given a generous spray of olive drab from a rattle can before they were sprayed and brush painted with various Vallejo acrylics.
And then there are others from the same source…
Now I am no botanist, so I have no idea if these are based on real plants and, even if they are, whether they are strictly appropriate for my Malayan jungle setting, but I always knew that they would end up surrounded by other foliage so, once they were painted, I hoped that they would look OK.
So once I had what I thought was a decent amount painted up I started to place them on the diorama. This was only a preliminary arrangement (they were just pushed into holes punched into the foamboard), but I soon realised that it wasn’t working. Everything just looked too sparse…
