How To: Rocks and Boulders

Good Thursday everyone!

Today I am covering the basics on how to make your own rocks and boulders.
Now these are things which I would say are a necessity for any old west setting.

First things first, you need a good base. In my first attempt I used cereal box card, this proved far too thin and warped beyond belief. My second attempt was using pizza box card. This was better, but still partially warped. When I try my next lot of rocks either next week or the week after, ill try using hardboard.

- if anyone has any hints on other good materials to use, please shout out!

Next up, you need newspaper,

Now you can pay for this, or like me just use a free paper from whatever available source.

After Newspaper you also need wallpaper paste:

If you have the means you can buy this ready made, or if like me you don't drive, then you can pick this up at your local D&Y shop in granule form.

Ok so you have your bits, next is to cut your base to size. Personally I like to do this using circles and curves, but some people prefer straight right angle lines.

Next up, you cut part of your newspaper into strips, I would say 5"x2" long. Out of the uncut newspaper, scrunch this into a ball as tight as you can, dunk a strip into your pre prepared wallpaper paste, and wrap it around the newspaper ball.

Ok, so now make as many of these as you want, as many different sizes and shapes as you want and then place them against your base.

The next trick is to apply more strips of pasted paper to connect the would be rocks with the base. I like to do this so that the entire base is covered (this is why my card bases warped as the card soaked up the water from the paste).

Once that is done set the units aside to dry. Now this can take anything from a few hours to a few days, so it's not ideal if you need terrain that day.

Once dried, you want to cover the bases in a glue, I use PVA and then sprinkle the base with a texture of your choice. Personally I love cat litter (unused) for this, cheap clumping cat litter. The granules tend to have a variety of sizes and make for an uneaven surface.

Again once dried (I'd leave it again for about 12-24 hours) take the whole thing outside to a well ventilated area and spray it head to toe in the colour of your choice. You can use a brush and do it by hand, but spray paint is so much faster and easier.

Again once dry, you then want to dry brush the model a lighter shade of the undercoat. I would recommend dry brushing both the car litter and the rocks themselves, this helps to create a unified feel to the model, suggesting the rocks are part of the ground instead of from a foreign material.

And if everything goes well, you can then apply any small details you want, static grass, little detals here and there, and with hope you have terrain features as good as, or hopefully better, than I have below: