A desert without sand?

[Quareni]

@MBE trance: The idea sounds promising. However, as it requires membership to see the site you have linked to, I would like to hear if it\'s possible for you to post the picture directly in this thread?

@FALCARRION: I am going for a smooth solution right now, so I\'ll wait a bit before I try flock, and without flock I think PVA on it\'s own is far too thin to add any kind of structure to compete with the foam. Right now I don\'t expect to use spray paint (unless I go for Krylon at some point), so corrosion of the foam is not an issue.

 

[lizcam]

It might be too late but if you go to delirium productions they have a flock that looks just like sand but is made from foam. Acually there are several and if I understand it right they will be coming out with some new blends that are even better. They are cool people and get back to you pretty quickly so you might want to check them out.

 

[MBE trance]

Try this, it is their
photobucket link:

http://s164.photobucket.com/albums/u23/rooboy3118/?action=view&current=sceneryday11-01-08020.jpg

they use the paper to prepare the surface for grass, but you could leave it for a desert look.

 

[Manus]

that is a really good idear - just remember, I\'m starting cooking up the jokes already :twisted:

 

[Quareni]

Right. It seems that Manus won\'t have to cook up any jokes, because now I have made my first experiment with paper and PVA glue, and it didn\'t come out anything like what I had hoped for.

Here\'s the raw hill and the same hill covered in tissue paper and thin, tinted PVA glue:

I don\'t like it. At all.

Still, I\'m going to give it a drybrush one of these days to see how something more completed looks, but right now I think it looks nothing like a desert. I suspect that I have used a wrong kind of paper - tissue is simply to soft whereas a thicker typer might give a better structure. However, even that would leave the problem of getting nice transitions between the levels of the hills, so I think I might be going for another solution. Lizcam\'s link to sand coloured foam flock seems to be the best alternative to Krylon right now.

But let me hear what you think - I can certainly still use ideas and advice.

 

[rextalon]

Dude, who dropped a deuce on your cutting mat?

I\'m sorry your rough draft didn\'t turn out right, but that\'s why The Emperor invented spackle.

 

[Shadzar]

what about instead of using sand for sand....use crushed floral foam?

 

[Manus]

I would still try to sand it down a bit and the add structurepaint. You get a good surface with the paint and you have the holes in the foam covered up now.

 

[PegaZus]

Looking at the tissue-hill, I wonder if you\'d taken a large brush (house paint sized) and tried to sweep the folds into one direction if it would have looked better. I think that it is the randomness of the textures that is throwing things off.

Edit: Looking again, you might take this desert-failure and paint it dark green. Then dry-brush brown over the folds. Then you\'ve got a vine covered hill.

Something more like this:

 

[Quareni]

I\'m really thankful for all the advice you gays are giving me. There\'s really loads of stuff to consider.

The picture of wind blown patterns in the desert is really good reference material. I don\'t know why I hadn\'t come up with that idea before. I guess that shows how great this forum is. I think I\'ll try to work on the direction of the lines in future in order to achieve something like that.

And about the deuce: I know it\'s not that pretty, but I think I prefer the comment from a friend who believed I had now constructed a liver lol
To get away from these kinds of associations, I have now painted the second hill (at least the sand - the rest is yet to go), and it looks like this:

Actually it\'s not that bad, so maybe this is the solution I\'ll go for, though I still want to try a combination of paper and Krylon (actually just mixed paint and Spackle). I\'ll keep you up to date and soon move on to show you my small experiments transferred to the whole gaming board.

 

[rextalon]

You know, I\'ve been thinking about how you could make that wind blown sand look. What if you covered a hill in spackle and dragged a serrated knife across it?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/318YZEJP6KL.jpg
Obviously the smaller the serrations the better, but I think it may just work.

 

[Quareni]

Latest experiment - and possibly the last.

Now I have reworked my first experimental hill by applying tissue to it, trying to follow the advice above and laying the folds in a better way. The result is this:

This IS an experiment. On the right I first applied a layer of sand before the whole hill was covered in tissue, and I think it works better without the sand.

@Rextalon: I have considered the idea of the serrated knife, but I fear it will create too brittle a surface to play on and transport, but the looks of it would probably be good.

 

[Manus]

I think this har greatly improved the surface. I like the right one the best but it sound like a lot more work.