First Post of the New Year: Proof of Concept

 I know its already January 9th, but Happy New Years!

I have to say that being on sabbatical has lowered my blood pressure some. There is still plenty of stress, but the idea of not teaching and even more so, not dealing with all the nonsense that is going on at my college, gives me a feeling of lightness. One of the things I've done is to start going to the local community center to work out. I am 60 year old, but I think I'm the youngest one there. The equipment is pretty good, so I plan to make working out more of a routine.

On to business....

First, in an effort to clean and organize the house, we moved some old bookshelves that we had on the first floor to the upstairs. My son got one, which is mainly for his LEGO collection. I got the other and finally consolidated all my hobby books into one bookshelf.  

New bookshelf. Almost, but not quite full.
My wife's tennis racket stringer to the right.

Why I didn't do this years ago escapes me. Before this, I had these very small metal ones that were OK, but I had long run out of room. Plus the sides were open and some of the rule books at the end facing the window were starting to yellow :(. This opens up a good deal of space in the "soldier room." The only thing now is to figure out what to do with some of the rule books that are in 3-ring binders. 

Painting of fantasy figures has slowed a bit, so I switched gears and have been working on some terrain features. Most of the terrain has been cultivated fields. I have been trying to make them so that I can use them for both 1/300 and for 1/600. One type of field that has frustrated me are corn fields. However, recently, I watched this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1cnHiqtsuMk9NwJNj8SmpA) where this guy was making tiny non-scale specific terrain mounted on hexes for his role playing games. In one video, he cut out strips of paper, folded it length-wise, feathered it using a pair of scissors, then mounted the feathered strip of paper onto a hex tile has a corn crop field. Anyway, I thought I'd give it a go. 

Closeup of corn field. Sorry about the blurriness.
I got a new phone and I'm trying to figure out the camera.

I used several different techniques and types of paper for each row. The ones on the far left were made using the YouTuber's technique of folding paper in half and cutting with scissors fringes representing stalks. The later ones were very thin cardboard (breakfast cereal boxes) and I used my Xacto knife rather than scissors to make the fringes. I did not go all the way to the bottom to keep some integrity to each row. I glued each strip down with superglue gel. They were painted a dark yellow and then I gave them a wash with brown. That helped pull out the stalks more. 

Here's what it looks like flipped around with some 1/600 figures next to it:

I think this will work pretty well for both scales. Its not perfect, but it gets the point across. I would have to come up with some other technique if I wanted to make a corn field for my 15mm figures.