Space Dinosaur Miniatures: Tutorial | Welcome to the Jungle, How to Make Some New Terrain

After plucking the lowest hanging fruit for a jungle terrain joke, the quality of the rest of this post can only get better. After a streak of painting miniatures, I wanted to pivot to making some good old fashioned terrain again. I'll be moving soon, and as part of that I've been taking inventory of what I have. I found some MDF bases lying around and some palm trees I bought an eternity ago, so I though why not make some jungle terrain. Throw in some bits from Archon Studios and Reaper Miniatures and I was ready to make it specifically into Lizardmen/Seraphon terrain, but it could just as easily be used for games of Dungeons & Dragons.

First, I took stock of what I had. Archon Studio's Rampart line of terrain had some Aztec themed buildings that came with some nice plastic scatter terrain. You can find it by searching for Kazumi Temple, or just follow that link. I glued them onto the bases, but I needed a little bit more for interest. I had scrap XPS foam as well, so I broke, cut and scraped them into stones that I was happy with. Finally, Reaper Miniatures had a spell known as Wall of Thorns that I used to make overgrown roots.

The specific palm trees I used were these from Amazon, but honestly you can use pretty much use anything that you find. The more variety in size the better, that's about the only rule to follow. I do want to get more species variety, but that's an eventual goal, not for this moment.

I then arranged the pieces that I had onto the MDF. Before gluing, I made sure that they looked cohesive and scaled well. At first the rocks were too large, so I broke them down a little further. It can be easy to tell that things are made from XPS foam if you don't do this, as all of the rocks will have a uniform 1" height. I glued everything down with tacky glue and let it sit overnight. I didn't show the painting process, but I painted all of the rocks and the ruin scatter before I added any foliage.

This is the general vibe I've been aiming for with all of my Lizardmen/Seraphon terrain. I wanted to capture the limestone with corrosion/grime look, so I used a pale sandy grey drybrushed with black to get something close but in a timely manner. Once the painting was done, I wanted to add the palm trees. To make them look like they were growing out of the ground, I added them before applying any ground texture. Each palm tree has a peg at the bottom, so I took a my pin vise and drilled a few holes are the bases. I was strategic where I placed trees, as I didn't want trees of the same height to be next to each other, as it makes it look like a farm and not the wild.

The pegs extended further than the MDF base, so I just clipped them to make it flush. I dabbed a bead of super glue to offer some extra support.

That's now the first round of foliage complete. I didn't want to go any further at this point to make it easier to paint all of the ground texture. I used old reliable: playground sand. I just brushed a layer of PVA glue and applied the sand. Once it had dried, I tapped off any sand that hadn't stuck to the model. I also brushed away any sand that had gone too far up either the ruins, the palm trees, or the rocks.

I painted all of the sand with Apple Barrel paints Burnt Umber. This is such a good earth tone, so I use it on practically everything ground coverage.

My wife drinks a ton of tea, so sometimes I take a packet and let it dry. I'll save it as jungle flocking and glue patches all over the bases. Leave a little bit of the earth showing. Every one of the next steps we take will cover less and less so as to show some of the previous layer underneath.

Next was a layer of Woodland Scenics Blended Turf Green. This gives a nice lush green without going to far into the neon/fake look. I also added a little bit of this to the statues to give them an overgrown look.

And finally, in small patches I added Army Painter static grass. Try to apply this in locations so as to blend the foliage together and make it all look more cohesive.

At this point, you're free to add as much or as little foliage as you want. I used some leftover floral parts from Michael's, and I also got a bag of plastic jungle plants from Amazon. These required some drilling similar to the palms from earlier. Once all that was in place, I glued on some clump foliage to look like bushes. And with that the scatter terrain is complete!

Now enjoy some nice glamor shots!

I actually liked the new jungle plants so much I went back and added them to some old jungle terrain I had. It also pushed my photo booth to it's limits with the amount of terrain I made.