Modell Making: Creating realistic tarp

I recently came across a couple of older historical wargaming tutorials about modelling tarp using tissues and PVA-glue and since the results looked quite realistic I decided to give it a try. The technique is certainly not new, but I could only find a couple of places where the process was described, and those were not very detailed.

Test pieces.

After some experimentation and a couple of test pieces, with varying results, it started to look interesting.

Wooden boxes covered by a large piece of tarp.

The process is simple enough. Just take a normal face tissue (Kleenex-type) and cut it to the desired size. You can then either first carefully dunk it in a 50-50% mix of PVA-glue and water, or put it dry on the model and then gently dab it with the watered-down glue. The tissue should become completely soaked and you will have to be careful to not rip it when you try to create the shapes and folds you want.

The process of soaking the tissue with watered-down glue is then repeated a couple of times more, letting the model dry between each pass. It is no problem if the tissue becomes transparent in places since it will all be covered with paint anyway.

The painting process is pretty straight forward. A couple of coats of acrylic paint in the colour of choice until it covers completely, a grey drybrush pass, a dark wash and finally a very light drybrush pass with cream or off-white.

Some people seem to have had problems with the glue dissolving during painting (especially when using washes or very watered down paint), but I found that this could be easily prevented by covering the "tarp" with a final layer of Mod Podge before painting. Mod Podge contains varnish and is quite water-resistant, in contrast to many normal PVA-glues.

As can be seen on the first test pieces, the washes have a tendency to pool a lot in all the folds and wrinkles and create a dirty look. If this is not what you want it can be easily fixed by avoiding very dark washes, and by carefully picking up the wash from the worst areas of pooling with a clean brush before it dries.

After a layer of matt varnish, the final result is a realistic-looking cloth or tarp effect. The tissue is now completely stiff and perfectly safe to handle on a wargame or RPG-table.

Final model from another angle.

A nice bonus with this technique is that all or most of what is under the tarp can be modelled very quickly using just about any material since it will not be visible. In my final model, I made everything except the half-exposed wooden box from cardboard. I added two thin strips of cardboard to one of the covered boxes to give the tissue something to fall around and create the illusion that more wooden boxes are sitting below the tarp.

Another great benefit is the versatility of these models. Boxes covered with some form of tarp or cloth to protect them from the elements have been around for thousands of years and can be found almost everywhere, from army camps to farms, harbours or city markets. If you do not add anything very time-specific, a model such as this can be used as scatter terrain for everything from early historical periods to modern times, or even in science fiction settings.