Outhouse/Store Shed (Painted)

This is the 4Ground Outhouse/Store Shed I picked up and blogged about recently.

Assembly took around 25 minutes (see post here) and painting was also quick and easy.

As mentioned previously, the footprint is 4 inches by 2 3/4 inches and the building has a height of 2 inches sloping down to 1 1/2 inches.

The building was painted with and Army Painter spray Leather Brown base coat. Some by-hand touch up followed (also Army Painter Leather Brown), and then some dry-brushing with Stone Grey (Vallejo)  mixed with Leather Brown. I picked out some particular planks with Stone Grey to provide colour variation.

Hobby Stuff - Tablescape Trees

I love these trees from Tablescape, I really do. They don't shed flock like the traditional wire and flock gaming trees, and can survive being knocked over etc.

Added to that, they come pre-painted and I think they are simply marvellous. Of course tastes differ, but I wanted to draw attention to them for anyone who may be interested.

The trees are made of hard foam and are £3 per tree, or 5 for £14 at current prices. Tablescape offer two base sizes which can be seen in the picture. The bases come separately (but are included in the price) and simply screw into pre-made holes.

Hobby Tip 1
The underside of the 'foliage' is in the hard foam colour; simply paint it with some acrylic - 5 trees can be done in a matter of minutes. I use Vallejo Black Green for the two darker colours, and Vallejo Medium Olive for the more olive coloured trees.

Hobby Tip 2
The two base sizes effectively give two primary variations of height among the trees. More variation can be added by cutting down the trees. The underside of the 'canopy'/'foliage' is flat, and what I did was take off 0.5 to 1 cm on a handful of trees. As can be seen this allows for an increased variation of heights very easily, especially if you don't want mix the different base styles.

The cutting was done with a coping (or fret?) saw in some cases and a bread knife in others. The coping saw made for easier cutting. I then sealed the undersides with a thin coat of liquid green stuff before painting as above.

The trees (in picture above):
1. Normal uncut height, tall base
2. Cut down height, tall base
3. Uncut height, short base
4. Cut down height, short base

Looking For: Lots Of Dark Grey Acrylic Paint

Okay, I am after a lot of the same colour water based acrylic in a dark grey (think German Grey or Black Grey by Vallejo as an example); I need to paint circa 24 square feet of terrain, and so mixing is simply not an option since I may need to colour match at a later date.

I looked at docrafts Artiste paint which I like and is cheap, but they do not appear to do a dark enough grey (basically a not-far-from black kind of grey).

What I am looking for is:
1. paint in the right colour
2. available from a UK supplier
3. a consistency comparable to GW or Vallejo or similar (not thick and very viscous as some art suppliers paints)
4. not exorbitant in terms of cost.

If anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it (an hour of google fu failed me this afternoon); feel free to comment below. Thanks in advance.

On other stuff, I hope to do a couple or so terrain posts soon, so watch this space.