Terrain Basics - Forests and Rivers

This post could almost be a “Spring Clean Challenge”.  I found some really old trees that I purchase way back in the 90s.  Some of them were beyond repair and had to be thrown away, however I did manage to salvage 8 of them – two large and six small. As they don’t really look like the other trees that I bought from Wish, I decided to make these into freestanding trees, rather than being part of a larger forest base.

They were previously stuck to plastic miniature bases but I decided to make them look a bit more interesting.  I made new bases for them using sculptamold which, when it was dry, was then painted dark brown and drybrushed with green.  This really helps when you put the flock over the top, giving it a much more natural undertone and making any gaps in the flock less obvious.  For the two larger trees I also made some roots out of pipecleaners that I soaked in watered down brown paint and PVA glue.  I then gave them a dark brown wash and a green drybrush, after they had been stuck to the base.  As you can see from the pictures, I used flock rather than the fine turf I now use.  These were very much a first attempt and my personal opinion is that the flock looks to coarse, each individual grain seems to look to big and the end result looks a bit spikey.  I do like these trees, they have a real old-school charm to them – I remember the pages of White Dwarf would be filled with pictures of battles that were full of things like this.  I took the opportunity to photograph my very old, original metal Green Knight miniature among some trees.  Because why not?