The dock

After painting the trees it was quite natural to start painting the wooden docks. First some repainting with the base color.

I used slightly greyish brown for the fist drybrush. In the pictures it looks little bit too brown

Dr. Arkadius confirmed that I was on the right path with these hexes.

I will use lighter brown for the next drybrush. I would like these planks to be little bit more greyish so let's see where the next highlite drybrush takes us.

Flu and some spare time

There is one good thing that comes with flu and that's the time left for other stuff when you can't physically train. It's not just yet the knock-you-down-and beats-you-up-kind of flu so I can continue with the hex tiles.

Now that I know the color scheme I started painting other stuff also and could for the first time to really see how they interact as a whole. I like!

Let's see how this turn out..

I used very simple weather effect for the rails and it worked like a charm. I just dapled the darker base color on top of the bright grey. I will weather the pieces more in the future.

Because the table itself will be mostly grey I want some color there also without ruining the overall look. I decided to make the trees little bit orange. This is after the first drybrush.

I think that these trees will be the only ones which are alive on the city hexes. Others will be bigger but dead. Why? I don't kown, I just like the idea. Maybe there is something special in this hex.

New direction with the color scheme

Well, I was drybrushing some of the pieces and had a revelation about the whole color scheme.

I used very light grey to make the final highlite on the paving and then decided to try to use it and another darker grey more on different objects on the hexes. I have had a idea to make the board to look little unnatural and even spooky and I think that this is the right way because I use the same colors everywhere BUT with different concentration. 

 

I think that the color scheme will look even better when I finish the hexes with grass, leaf, trees and stuff.

Onward!

I have decided to try to arrange hobby time at least once a week. It may sound funny but even that will require some planning to get everything to fit in a week (family, work, training and wrestling) and still get enough sleep. Few years ago I could easily build and paint stuff past midnight and wake up fresh, but now that some water has gone by I have found that I need at least that 8 hours of sleep to be able to recover from life and training.

Yesterday all the stars were in line and I even got something done. To get things moving I painted the last two finished city hexes. Well, finished is a wrong term because I had planned to add more decoration and stuff to these pieces but know I think that it's better to just move on.

My initial plan were to use a basecoat with two drybrush layers, then use dark wash to darken the soil under the tiles and finish it of with light drybrush. I tried to make my own wash with the instructions from The Leadhead but although I used my darkest brown the wash was too light and didn't look right. I had to repaint the piece but that's how things sometimes go. I also though about using black wash but I don't like to use black with terrain because it's quite unnatural in my opinion. Instead of the wash I just used light grey to drybrush the tiles and I think that the result is good enough. If I find dark brown ink somewhere I might give the wash another go.

 If you are a terrain maker remember always keep your eyes open for discount brushes. I have bought countless brush sets in the past and now it's very easy to just choose a right tool for the job.

You can take the man out of hobby, but not the hobby out of man

Sometimes you just need a little push. This time it came from Privateer Press forums in a shape off a user named Shoobie. He just commented my thread that "just finish something". F**CKING brilliant!! I have too long though about what I need to do (and in which I don´t have time) rather than what I CAN do. Those harbor hexes have stood there finished for months and I just didn´t pick those up and therefore stalled, badly.

So, today I grapped my brush after five months (?!) of hiatus and let it go.

How can you tell that my hiatus lasted too damn long?

I used very dark grey over the brown basecoat

Over that I drybrushed blueish grey

Of course Dr. Arkadius came to check what the hell was going on.

After the drybrush and with some scenery.

 How about with a house?

I will continue with some drybrushing and ageing but you know, I think that this will end up rather nice!

This session, again, showed me how frigging great and important this hobby is to me!