I decided to try and put together at least one more bit of scenery for my games of the Last Drifters, nothing too complicated as I didn’t have a lot of time.
The item of scenery I was going to try and finish was the billboard I printed a month or two ago, this would be simple to put together and based ready for painting.
After fixing to its base I then added some sand and some slightly bigger stones for a rough wasteland effect, I sorted out a couple of 3D printed tyres and a couple of oil drums to add the base as well.
These will hopefully add a bit of wasteland rubbish effect to the billboards base.
The first thing I did was to prime it in Vallejo Grey to seal it all ready for painting, why grey? Well that’s all I had at the time, I normally prime my scenery in black but I had run out of black so I used what I had.
I don’t think the colour of the primer really matters as much for scenery as it does for figures, although for my quality of painting it doesn’t really matter for figures either!!
While all this was drying I looked on the internet to try and get some ideas for the actual poster on the board, this wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be as I already had three billboards with different posters on, still I kept looking until I found a design that I liked and knew I would be able to make it work for me.
The poster I was going to do is one for a corporation that is mentioned in the main rules, this is just one of the remaining big companies that produce a variety of things needed in the wastelands including vehicle parts and weapons, so I wanted something that would give a view of these items in some way.
Life is a race, let Zen Corp help you win etc. etc. that is the sort of text that I wanted on the poster although the text may change at some point but for now I am happy with it.
This is how the poster has turned out ( I can always stick a new poster over the first one if I want to change it )
The base colours for the wooden billboard will obviously be different browns so once the primer was dry I started with a quick coat of Game Color Beasty Brown, this gives a really nice base coat for the wood, then I base coated the oil drums and tyres with Model Color Black.
Once this was dry I added a quick heavy coat of Army Painter Dark Tone, this was to darken the basic brown and to give me an idea of how much detail there was on the 3D print.
I also added a quick coat of Army Painter Gun Metal to the oil drums and centre of the wheels.
Well the dark Tone worked really well so I printed out the poster and stuck it on the billboard ready for me to weather it a little.
Next up was a quick dry brush over all the wood areas with a Model Air Light Grey, I then added a very watered down ( almost a wash ) of Model Color Luftwaffe Uniform onto the two oil drums and the centres of the two wheels on the base.
While this was still wet I added some Model Air Rust to the oil drums and wheels.
I then added a coat of Vallejo German Dark Yellow Primer to the base as that is the colour I use on all my wasteland / desert scenery.
Next I dry brushed Model Color buff all over the sand base, this picked out all the small sones and the sand, giving a nice desert / wasteland effect to the base.
I then lightly dry brushed the tyres with the buff as well to give them a dusty sandy look to finish them off.
I then added a spill from the laying down oil drum with Vallejo Weathering Effects Slimy Grime Light, once this was dry I added a little gloss to make this look wet.
I then did a light weathering on the poster itself, this was done with some very “wet” Citadel Agrax Earthshade ( I brushed water all over the poster first to make the Agrax flow better )
Next I added a little watered down Army Painter Soft tone around the tyres, posts, Oil Drums and some of the bigger stones to add a little shadow.
The last thing this piece of terrain needed was some light tan tufts, this adds a little realism to the base and also matches all my other wasteland scenery bases.
Well that’s it all done, I know that was a lot of stages just for a simple piece of scenery, but I think it is worth the effort as it should look good on the table in my games.
Next up for the Last Drifters scenery is some wrecked vehicles, these will be scatter terrain and also to line the race tracks, so lots of smashing vehicles with a hammer next time!!
