Since I began my mini painting adventure I was always curious about what it would take to make my own terrain pieces for the table. I felt very similarly when I first wanted to paint; I had no idea where to start and unsure how it would go without some sort of guidance. So that’s what I went looking for. I scoured youtube of different mini painters and terrain builders, and a lot of them made some amazing stuff but nothing that had a low barrier to entry. That is until I came across Black Magic Craft. In this video he gave a clear step by step breakdown of how to make affordable terrain using the cheapest materials that anyone can find at a dollar store. The walkthrough extremely easy to follow and I thought it was time I give it a go.
All the material I used I found for cheaper than one would expect. The foam board, styrofoam plates, stir sticks, and a few others I got from the dollar store, and what I needed left was some cheap paints that I got for less than a dollar at Michael’s. With my tools gathered I started. As Jeremy says in the video, this project is very time consuming. I spent a couple hours texturing the stone and wood, then cutting them out. It was pretty disheartening at times. Gluing the wood foam was very fast an easy, but holy shit the cobblestone was so much worse. It meticulous and sometimes nerve wracking because I was unsure if it looked good. Overall I just put things where I thought they fit well and said to hell with it. The one thing I didn’t anticipate, and I really should have, was the amount of thinning I would need to do with the craft paint I bought. A lot of the details got filled in because the paint was just not thin enough. A few times during this project I really felt like it just was not going to look good and all this work was going to be for nothing. I applied my homemade washes on both sides and still felt this way. It wasn’t until I applied the drybrushing that I was finally satisfied with it. The stones looked like actual stones and the wood looked like stained wood. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some problems with it, but I learned. I learned what changes to make if I were to give this another go around with larger pieces. All in all I am very happy with these results and I’m looking forward to making more. I think I’ll just hold off on it for a little while.
Black Magic Craft is a fantastic source for easy to follow guides that you can make for cheap, and I highly recommend anyone interested in building terrain, or dioramas to give his videos a look.
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The Dungeoneer's Journal 