Santa's Workshop

Get Your Feet Wet

You hear the following noise: SQUISH! SQUISH! SQUISH! If your first reaction was to say to me: "Why Santa, you ole devil, this is a wholesome and reputable publication!" My reply would be: GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER! That's the sound of your troops walking through this month's project! Yep, that's right kiddies, we're gonna talk about marshes. Now, there are many ways which marshes can be depicted on the game table, the least of which is lichen placed on top of some dark felt. But a real bona fide marsh, complete with reeds can really supe up your terrain, especially when place alongside a nice river.

I recently made up 2 pieces of marsh, both basically 6x4 inches in area. To start, I used my current favorite basing material. That is artist's canvas or board, and is just that- a heavy cardboard with a canvas laminate. It's made to take paint, and so far I've used it for multiple projects, and it hasn't warped. The best part is that it comes in large sheets, so you are not limited in the size of project. The only draw back is cutting it. You can try very heavy scissors, but I personally use shears that are made to cut tin, and are sometimes awkward to turn on tight curves. I also cheated on this one and used some marsh Islands from TCS terrain that I picked up at Cold Wars, small bits of ground, each approximately 1 inch in diameter. I glued these down on the board after I cut out the shape of the marsh. You can glue down rocks or sculpt ground pieces out of modeling clay, for starters. After those were dry, I textured the very edges with some of Renaissance Ink's flocking gel, making sure that there were no edges showing, as the edges would be depicted as if under water. I then textured the very outer edge with the same material, forming a ring all the way around the base, and then let it dry. Also I took some plain spackle and filled in the canvas bumps on the board-one of the small drawbacks of this basing material.

Now is the painting stage after all materials are dry. I started with the water. I mixed a dark green and dark blue together to give the water a very murky look, and painted where the water would be. When this was dry, I began varnishing the water. You can use any glossy varnish for this, but I didn't have any , so I used Elmer's glue, a suitable substitute, and painted a layer on, as it dries clear but shiny. I proceeded to paint on 4 more coats successively, the shinier, the better. Then I painted the dry ground with my favorite method, which is paint on dark green. Then paint on a "leafy" green ink. Then highlight with a foliage green dry brush. Next were the reeds.

Reeds are a lot easier to make than I first thought, and cheap, too! You can use this method with most scales, just shorten or lengthen as needed. You need: a bottle of dark green Rit dye, and some sisal string (brown twine). Cut off a good length and just stick it in the bottle of dye for a couple of days (leave a tail sticking out so you can get a hold of it). Pull it out and let it air dry a couple more days. When you're ready, grab a clump on the end of the string and glue it down to the marsh with Elmer's and hold in place for approximately one minute, and it should stand. Don't forget that reeds grow in water! Do this in clumps throughout you r marsh, preferably but not always next to the bank. When dry, hit it with the ink and dry brush with the green foliage, and Voila! There's your marsh! There is an alternative that I haven't tried yet. I would like to make a pond, but leave the Islands out of the middle. And instead of green reeds, you can make cattails, by simply leaving the string it's natural color, and dipping the end of the clump into glue and then dark brown earthen flock, let dry and then glue down. I don't know, I'll let you know how it turns out.

And now on to a new feature of Santa's workshop, "Ask Santa". Elmo Fallsblat of Beaver Falls, Iowa, writes: "Dear Santa, have you ever found a suitable and affordable substitute for milliput? That stuff is so expensive, and the Brits really have us by the sack with some of these imports". Elmo, this very week I found a very good alternative. There are several brands actually, and can be found in the plumbing section of your favorite DIY store. My brand is called "Epoxy Putty", by Oatey, and is made in Cleveland. It's a two part compound, just like milliput, dries rock hard, and is paint-sand-moldable, and any other - able you can think of. It even will dry under water in case you want to do any painting/conversion work while in the bathtub! I will feature it in a future project. Thanks for the letter, Elmo! Till next time.