A Mat For Battling

After a conversation on the 6mm Yahoo Group I offered to do a tutorial on making your own home made terrain mat for war gaming on.

I've had a piece of fabric from back when I started war gaming here in NJ. I got it at the fabric store, it was felt, and it had this brown/green tinge to it. Good enough for my colonial battles, and the price was right.

Next I hit it with a wiggle pattern of green but allow enough of the brown to show through to keep it "interesting".

Then I use my faithful newspaper to section off a portion of the mat. There appears to be no wind today!

No sooner did I finish that previous picture and the wind picked up, hence the wood blocks I had laying around in the garage. Here I've made my first pass with the yellow paint. Keep in mind a look at Google Earth will help with your color selection. Simply locate an area similar or identical to what you want to recreate - let Nature guide you!

Here I'm doing the dark green - when shooting the spray paint shoot straight down and keep the wooden block close to the edges of the newspaper so that the lines will be clean and neat.

Here the reddish, yellow, and dark green is done.

Followed by darkest green.

Followed by not-so-darkest-green (cut me some slack on names); notice the spotty "tree" pattern technique.

In the end experiment with colors and technique. You can go back with a sponge and add trees to the edges of the fields, etc. Do what ever you think you need to add in terms of detail in order to get the effect you want.

Now, you can spray a clear coat of acrylic matte finish but I think I'll just leave mine outside to breathe for a day or two. DO ALL SPRAYING OUTSIDE, LET THE MAT DRY A DAY OR TWO OUTSIDE BEFORE STORING INSIDE.

Cheers & Enjoy