Wood you believe it!

That is the reinforcements all painted now. Lots of basing to do next for almost everyone, hope I have enough herbs ?

actually I may varnish first. Always hesitant though in case it wrecks everything done so far.

Well, the model I was looking forward to painting the most and I’m not happy with how she’s turned out. I think the swarms are too plain just in the spirit-blue, might have to get out a tiny brush and try to do the carapaces in the purple I’ve used for the other beastie companions. Hmmm, looking forward to that…..

The new character choice was a great mini to paint. Excellent textures and pose, really worked well with the contrast paint. I left the winged beastie off to get at the rest of the mini first then glued it back on at the end no problem. Really pleased with the end result here.

Actual Hunters finished this morning. Possibly a bit on the dark side but will see after basing.
Cheers for the golden button guys, here’s a cheeky butt shot for Lloydy.

Treelord ancient done. Rather than the Blue spirit energy of Durthu I tried green life magic for the swirls in the bark. Doesn’t pop enough though, the blue is much more vivid. Think I might go back with some white to highlight them a bit then try a yellow glaze to brighten them more?

Unit of converted Spite-Rev’s done. Pretty simple conversion really, as I said before just used dryad bodies with extra spite-rev heads and arms. Without the back branches the hunched poses and big claws do look like they’re coming for you.

Boom! Durthu the angry Treelord mostly complete and I think he looks really good. Same paints as before, super quick but pretty effective. I went back over the swirls in his bark/armour with some white and then used the Aethermatic blue to show the magic/sylvaneth essence bursting out of him, it really pops.

Then there is the current state of the army. Looking good so far. Couple big units of Dryads, Branchwych, Branchwraith made from the skull head on the dryad sprue, 2 units of Shamblers, small unit of tree-rev’s and Durthu. Need (Ha!) another start collecting box that will allow me to add a regular treelord, a few more dryads and use the spare heads front the looncure box on the rest to make more converted Spite-rev’s.

As I said at the start I started the actual project before deciding to try the blog too so from the mini’s primed today I did a couple Step by step pics to show how fast my all contrast scheme is. I also started basing the dryads already painted based on the Forest Shamblers test. The bases get a wash of Wyldwood as a base. 2 grades of a slatey (?) rock I got from the model railway show couple years ago (and have never used, do you sense a theme…) glued in patches and then i will add the mixed herbs. The rims are Matt black, usually i use brown but there is so much brown in the army it needs the black to outline the mini.

I assembled the contents of the looncurse box, a Treelord Ancient and Drycha. Some of the last sprues of dryads I had were used as a test to convert a squad of Spite-revenants using the heads and arms left on the tree revenant sprues. They look ok, clearly a different silhouette from the dryads and tree-revs, and with some paint they should be good to go, and a significant saving on another couple boxes of tree rev’s.

The Camo brown spray ran out so as I wanted to get stuff primed today I went a bit heavier with the white zenith, I don’t think it will make a huge difference to be honest but we’ll see.

The Forest Shamblers were to be used as Kurnoth hunters but were a bit shorter and lacked the branches of the GW models. To remedy this and help them tie into the rest of the army they were based on the correct 60mm round bases which I built up with milliput and gravel from my in-laws front garden ;). They also had spare dryad back branches attached to give them a bit more girth and again add some more height. As they were based I did a trial of my “Forest floor” basing using my secret weapon: mixed herbs. I think it looks pretty good and as a bonus the army will smell faintly of pizza whenever it comes out the box (at least for a while).

I started with the dryads that were assembled and primed, they got a white zenith then I started painting. Initially I went with Militarum Green for the leaves, aethermatic blue for the eyes/magic and Wyldwood Wood brown for everything else. This was a pretty woody looking but very dark, not what I was looking for. So I mixed it up a bit and tried a new scheme with same green and blue ares but i split the bark into different areas. The torso/bikini, “boots” to the knee and lower branches were Wyld wood but the thighs, arms, branch tips and face were snakebite leather. This gave a bit more definition to the models so I ploughed on and applied this to the whole force. Added to the dryads were a squad of Tree revenants, the mantic Tree Herders and i built a spirit of Durthu.

I have been sitting on a pile of Sylvaneth minis for a couple years now and never got round to actually doing anything with them. Not any longer! This year I hope to make a bit of a dent in the mini’s mountain in my loft by actually building, painting and maybe, just maybe gaming with some of them. Like everyone else I have lots of unfinished projects, unstated projects and just boxes of stuff waiting for a rainy day. We’ve had plenty of them lately so I decided to dive in and start with one of my favourite armies that I have collected for years but never really done anything with: Tree folk.

The state of the army as of last week was a couple boxes of dryads from around 7th ed WFB, couple start collecting boxes from current AoS, some Mantic Forest shambles from KoW 1st Kickstarter and a Looncurse. Hardly any built and nothing painted to a gaming standard. The Dryads I had built had been under coated in a Halfords Camo brown spray, the plan being to dry brush them later, fast forward a couple years to now, no drybrushing. The new plan was keep the brown primer and zenith white then unleash Contrast!! Let’s see how i got on (actually started last week but didn’t think to start this project blog until today. It’s my first so we’ll see how this goes.).