Saturday 6 June 2015

Teddy bear fur and some Art Miniaturen 20mm A-Hungarian line infantry

Teddy bear fur is excellent as ground terrain for 20mm+. The fur shown is 15 feet long and 6 foot wide. It comes in a brown shade so a pale green/yellow mix followed by some even paler yellow/white mix gives great results. The original colour of the fur can just be glimpsed in the foreground and extreme right hand edge. 80% of the fur has been shaved off.

Been asked for more info on the teddy bear fur:
The actual fur was bought from a company in the Midlands (there are several) for about £90. It is called faux fur and comes in a lightish brown. I bought a battery powered electric hairdresser's shaving implement with different attachments (no 3 please sir) and shaved 80% of the fur off in a very random way. Doesn't take too long. Forget scissors. No thought was given where I left bits…except for the whitish clump in the middle which is roughly at the same length of hair when bought. (2 inches approx) I had to re-charge the batteries several times.this shaving process will take a good couple of hours and do it OUTSIDE!!

I then got one of those orange pump action paint sprayers which holds about 1.5 litres of water from B&Q I think. I added about 3 table spoon fulls of green grass (pale green) from a colour chart in B&Q of water based emulsion paint (don't get anything oily) and then added the 1.5 litres of water and shook well. You don't need much paint….those little tester pots in B&Q are sufficient. This was all done with effectively 3 layers. The first layer was the darker green which looked rather acidic (just visible in a line in the foreground, and looked awful) and I have only now, several months later, made my second attempt with the paler green. The mistake I made was to use too much paint and not enough water. I sprayed it from waist height so there was minimal clumping of paint, leaving a few brown bits. Dried in the sun and left it to dry overnight under cover. Following day rinsed out the bottle and blew out the tubes to ensure no blockages, then put in a yellow/off white mix and sprayed over certain more "fury" areas to depict the longer grass. Do leave some areas brown. This does not need a paint brush. And please please get the "right" shade of green. Many fields in summer are hardly green at all, but more of a pale yellow….with a hint of green.

  • Battery powered clippers.
  • Faux fur. 
  • 4 tester pots of paint. (shades of green/yellow/white) you have the brown already (the fur)
  • Pump action sprayer.
  • Enough outside space.


For 15mm or less, one is better off sticking to felt. Will look better once there are some figures, like these nearly finished A-Hungarians. Based on 1813.


1 comment:

  1. Looking very nice Francis! Yeah I've seen a few people now with TB fur, the poor teddies that were sacrificed in obtaining it. I shudder to think!

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