Arctic Gaming Mat

[Nenthwe]

I've been toying with making some super portable terrain for some time. My regular gaming group lives in another city and I often have to transport my gear. So I decided to make some durable terrain pieces that I can throw into a bag and a mat to add some color to the table. I wanted to make the mat very portable (I transport it in a painter's canvas roll container) and in a way so there were no natural terrain features to it. Of course I needed a theme to tie it all together and decided to make something special for one of my favorite casters: Raspy. 

 

I decided to aim for the image of a fairly solid landmass surrounded by frozen bodies of water. It's sort of a frozen coast kind of idea, but looks solid enough as to not invoke any predetermined special terrain areas. I decided not to flock the mat- it's finely textured and I wanted to avoid the ever present pool of flock that gets shaken off whenever a flocked mat gets stowed or taken out. 

Here's the finished product:
 

The mat is made from regular low end painting canvas.
I then applied a layer of acrylic caulk to the canvas for texture, stability and to prime the surface for the layers of paint to go on.

 

From there I drew out my rough outline and laid down the first coats. For the mainland I went with an off white and for the frozen bodies of water, I went for a dark blue. So far, everything's pretty basic.

Then I took the mix down on both areas by adding some white

And then again

At this point I needed to really give the mat it's "icy" feel- It still looked too much like flowing water. So with a foam brush I added white streaks bridging from the land mass out into the water areas and then repeated the outwards, keeping the direction of the brush strokes the same.

I had to do maybe 4-5 coats of these streaks until I achieved a result I was happy with

Once the paint was dry, I hit it with a couple coats of a clear, satin finish from an aerosol can.  

[Nenthwe]

As for the terrain pieces, they're all very Icy themed and I wanted to create pieces that could be allocated different attributes (although I did end up making a tonne of blocking, impassible, hard cover terrain pieces). The majority of the terrain pieces I made were ice pillar formations. I did this for a few reasons. The first, They look really cool. Second, I needed to make Raspy some summon-able pillars she could use IG, and well I figured since I was making a couple, why not make more? 
I spent one night watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns and whittling polystyrene into crystalline shapes. I kind of lost track of how many I was making and that resulted in making quite a few terrain pieces of the same nature. I eventually varied the height and made some Ht1 blockades. They got painted up and I finished them with crackle paint cracked ice base and a decent bit of snow

 

I then went and made a few pieces that could be used for either severe terrain or hazardous terrain. Keeping in theme I went for some heavy fissures in the Ice. I realize I don't have any good pictures of them, but here's one in front of Von Schill 

 

Then I made a couple of Ice gamin igloo/cave things to add some more diversity. 

 

Give me a shout if you'd like a bit more detail on how any of the pieces were made!

 

[paradoxstorm]

Gonna have to try my hand at some of that terrain...looks pretty sweet.

[Guslado]

Very cool looking terrain! I would love to play my Rasputina on that board!