Field Day!

Now that I have a solid core of buildings done for my village I need terrain to go around them. I have a scattering of trees but I'd also like to add some fields, hedges, and stone walls. First off is an experiment in making a plowed field.

Several years ago I made a set of flexible dirt roads out of silicon caulking so I thought I'd try the same technique here. They had the advantage of being flexible enough to mold to an uneven playing surface and still looked pretty nice.

I cut out a piece of stiff felt to use as the base. The cloth works as a reinforcement so the caulking is a little more durable and doesn't rip as much. Normally I wouldn't use something quite so stiff but I found this laying around in the basement.

Next I covered it with the silicon caulking. I chose a chocolate brown color so that as it gets banged up the base color won't be so jarring. Basically you just want to spread it on thickly like icing a cake and make sure to overlap all of the edges. After it was fairly smooth I covered it liberally with sand to texture it. You can use your hand to press the sand into the caulking a little. Then I used an old straight edge to press in the furrows of the field.

I let that dry overnight and shook all of the extra sand off and peeled it off of the saran wrap. I neatened up the edges a little with a knife then the whole thing got a coat of watered glue and some more sand was sprinkled on to cover up any mistakes.

After drying it was painted up pretty simply with browns and drybrushing and then some static grass and flock to blend it into my usual basing. All and all I'm pretty happy with it. I have several more pieces of felt and some caulking left so I'll make at least a couple more.