North Africa Scenery

A few key pieces of "evocative" scenery really help to set the tone of a battlefield, so whilst looking at almost endless documentaries about the desert war I spotted a couple of clips with what appeared to be ancient ruins in the background.

This seemed an ideal little scenery project and I was delighted to have spotted these very reasonably priced resin pieces on the trade stand of The Square at Bovington earlier this year.


Here are the basic models.

The bases are just pieces of thin plywood I had left over from some packs of trees I bought from 4Ground.  I've given everything a light spray of AP Desert Yellow just to prime the surface for painting.

Here I've based them with the usual stones/grit/sand mix and applied my desert theme of basing colours - Americana Country Maple, Americana Tan, VMC Dark Sand and Foundry Boneyard.

The columns were initially painted with a solid base coat of Americana Honey Brown.  Using this as a base colour should give me a subtle difference in colours/finish between the ruins and the base, yet still have them work together.  Two coats gives nice, even coverage.

Next is a heavy highlight of VMC Tan Yellow.  Again this colour isn't part of the basing scheme.  Be sure to leave plenty of base coat showing in all of the cracks and recesses.

Next, highlight with VMC Dark Sand.  Here you can see the pillars starting to blend in slightly with the base colours which was my intention.

Finally apply a light highlight of Foundry Boneyard as this ties the colour of the columns to the dusty look of the ground.  The photo doesn't really show how much the ruins differ from the base, but hopefully you get the idea!

Then add some clump foliage, tufts and few flowers.

Not bad for a fiver and few hours of painting & modelling!

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