Wealdgeist, Spring Cleaning The Forest

With the treemen painted it was time to paint the various features on the bases.

For the rocks I first picked them out in either mahogany brown or chestnut gold (a Reaper paint) then drybrushed them with read leather or plague brown respectively. These all got a lighter drybrush of khaki grey and then dark sand to tie the two different colours together and fit them into the rest of the base.

All the mushrooms got a base coat of khaki grey (one of my favourite colour paints, so very useful) and the small fury creature was painted leather brown. All the mushrooms, the skulls and the creature was washed in a 1:1 mix of agrax earthshade and paint medium of your choice (water, dilute matt medium, lamia medium, whatever) to reduce the strength of the wash a little.

Then once the wash was dry all of the mushrooms and the skulls were drybrushed first in dark sand then pale sand.

I then used painted the mushrooms in three different ways, either a lighter contrast (blood angels, skeleton horde, Magos purple) then a darker contrast focusing on the centre top of the mushroom (flesh tearers red, guilliman flesh, diluted shyish purple (as it’s very strong) to give a graduated effect.

I then used pale sand to add tiny dots to all the red mushrooms or to give a very slight drybrush to the other mushrooms, just to add a slight texture.

The rocks were then given a glaze of green ink to help blend them into the scene even more.

I then blacked the rims of the base using black brush on primer as it gives a very smooth layer. The miniatures were then varnished, first with gloss then with matt. I’ve used this combo of varnish for a long time now and it provides really good protection, especially on metal miniatures.

Once everything was dry it was time to add the final touches to the basing. Below you can see the materials I used. I first added the tufts of moss. Then I sued the woodland texture and finally I added a few leaves. All this texture was allowed to dry before I sealed it all with a thinned down mix of pva glue mixed with a little flow improver (two tiny drops of washing up liquid) to help break the surface tension wick the pva into the material.

I’m very happy with how the bases turned out. I’ve been working through several iterations of my fantasy forest bases for a while and so far this is my best yet.

With these three miniatures completed this process will be used as a template for the other wealdgeist models.