A simple hill

This is a project I did over two years ago, but I recently stumbled upon the images and thought it would be a good project to share as it is easy to replicate.

At the time, I was playing through the early Rangers of the Shadow Deep core book campaign and I wanted a medium terrain piece with height difference and a bit of line of sight blocking.
This all happened before I decided to create this blog, so I sadly took no pictures from the scenarios itself and only mediocre ones of the hill building process.

Looking through my available materials, I decided upon a simple hill with a cliff.
Cork bark for the cliff, expanded polystyrene (eps) as the basic structure, and thick cardstock as the base.

I cut the eps in the rough shape of a hill and hotglued everything on to the base.

I then covered everything but the cork bark with filler and tried to hide the rough angles and transitions. In hindsight, I should have cut the structure a bit less blocky, as the filler didn't have the mass I was hoping for and most of the original form still shows through.
After letting it dry, I glued rocks and grit all over the hill and spray primed it gray.

The hill got a basecoat of a warm brown, after which the cliff and all the rocks were drybrushed with some lighter tones. I experimented with a black and brown wash in the deeper recesses of the cliff, but the cork bark soaked most of it up, even with the primer.
I then finished it off with static grass, some tufts and flowers, and a bigger bush on the side.

Overall, I am very happy with this piece. It took several days because of all the drying time, but in terms of actual work it was surprisingly simple and straightforward.

I think it looks great on the table, and it has since then seen plenty of use during my gaming sessions.