Hobby Projects

Beginner's Corner
Modelling
Painting
Gaming
Making Scenery

Tools & Equipment
Materials
Work Place

BEGINNERS' SCENERY MAKING

The first scenery making you try will probably be assembling the wargames scenery that comes in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 boxed sets, and you'll find some extra help here. Once you tried these, you might want to have a go at some of the other projects, such as making hills or hedges.

Making your own scenery is not only fun but a relatively inexpensive way of acquiring new scenery for your wargames table. In fact, you'll probably find that the only limit is your imagination - scenery can be made from all sorts of different materials.

WHAT EQUIPMENT DO YOU NEED?

You will need the following equipment for the scenery projects listed below:

GLUE. You will need three types of glue for scenery making:

• Superglue, which is used for gluing metal to metal, and metal to plastic
• Plastic glue (also known as liquid polystyrene cement), which is used for gluing plastic to plastic
• PVA glue, a general purpose glue suitable for paper, flock, polystyrene etc

Glue can be dangerous. Please read these safety guidelines

MODELLING KNIFE. Modelling knives are used for all sorts of cutting purposes, as well as "cleaning" tiny pieces of excess metal or plastic off models prior to painting. Be very careful when you are using a modelling knife; the best kind to use is the type with a retractable blade that can be withdrawn when the knife is not in use.

Be very careful when using knives, they can be dangerous. Please read these safety guidelines

PAINT BRUSHES. Brushes come in various sizes. For scenery making, you will need some medium- and big-sized brushes, such as the Citadel Basecoat, Large and Tank brushes.

PAINTS. For some scenery-making projects, you will need paint. Our own brand of non-toxic acrylic paint - Citadel Colour - is ideal, and can be used on all sorts of materials, after an undercoat. It's difficult to give an exact list of the colours you'll need for scenery making, but a selection of natural colours like black, white, grey, green and brown should get you off to a good start. You can either go to a store and pick out the colours you like, or, if you don't already have any paint, we'd recommend one of our two starter paint sets, which contain nine specially selected pots of paint, along with a brush, a mini painting guide, and some models. You can then buy new colours as you need them.

For undercoating, you will need a can of Citadel undercoat spray paint, available in white, black, green and other colours.

CLIPPERS. These are great for removing plastic models from their sprue, and they're a lot safer to use than a knife! 

All these items can be purchased from Games Workshop, where our trained staff will be happy to advise you.

OTHER EQUIPMENT. The following equipment may also come in useful. You should be able to find these things lying around your house.

• Pencils, pens, eraser
• Scissors (for cutting card and paper)
• Mixing palette (you could use an old plate or a pukka artist's mixing palette)
• Water pot (an empty jam jar or plastic cup will do fine)
• Kitchen paper, tissues, for mopping up spills and cleaning things

WHAT MATERIALS DO YOU NEED?

The materials you need for scenery making vary greatly depending on what you're making. The projects on this section of the webiste all use materials that can be found around the house, or bought quite cheaply at a stationers or a DIY superstore. A list of the materials you will need is given at the beginning of each project.

Undercoating. Some of these scenery projects may need to be undercoated before you can paint them. More

WHEN YOU'RE READY TO MOVE ON....

Once you've made and painted some of the scenery listed in the Beginners' section, and you're feeling a bit more confident, you could try some of the projects on the main area of the Hobby website.