African Circle

Some more, small touches on the Baobab. Glad to have the green stuff work done. Now it’s time to make a base for it (Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to forget buying cork when I was in Antwerp this week) and add some skulls spilling out of the crack in the tree.

Although I am happy with the result, I feel like I am still missing something here. I feel like I need to add something to the branches, but don’t know what. The original has skeletons hanging from the tree. I really don’t want to go there, to be honest. Hanging trees combined with black-skinned people is a place that I don’t even want to get in the vicinity of.

So suggestions for other things to do to add some magic to the tree or to the branches specifically are very welcome below.

While I am waiting to get some more greenstuff, I thought I’d start trying to get some paint on a model. Luckily, I had an old Morvhana lying around, that I was really happy about. No conversions needed, some skin, some flowing robes,… Perfect as a test piece in other words.

As this was my first time painting black skin, I was a bit anxious. I used this picture as a point of inspiration, because I love the colors that the artist got.

In the end, I went with a combination of colors. A basecoat of medium skin from Nocturna (From a set I once bought specifically meant to paint skin), shadows with parasite brown, dark flesh, charred brown and black. And some highlights with bone white.

I will try and get the recipe a bit easier later on and will do a step by step tutorial, but for now, I just want to show of the skin, as I am pretty happy with it (even though the pictures don’t really do it justice).

For those familiar with the system, My first caster will be Wurmwood, Tree of Fate. For those not familiar with the system: the tree is the warlord of this army, The guy wrapped in a branch is there to help the tree.

I have always thought that tree should look a lot more epic than the one from PP. I understand the difficulties of casting a model means they can’t make really cool trees, but luckily, I had no such problems.

What is more, the Circle Orboros faction is heavily anchored in Celtic tradition, which means a tree like the one above might work. I on the other hand, wanted to make an African tree. After some digging around on the internet, I decided no tree would be better than the iconical Baobab.

So with my trusted wire and plyers in hand, I started bending, twisting and clipping, until I ended up with this bad boy:

Once the wireframe was in place, I started the long, tedious task of sculpting the tree. There is no way in sugarcoating it: this takes an incredible long time to do. And yes, you will burn out on it eventually. The main thing to keep in mind is to do it branch per branch. Start on a twig and go from there. I started on the ends and sculpted my way up the branch until I encountered a side branch. Then I sculpted that one, till I came to the join, where I could continue.

And maybe even more important: take breaks regularly. Like I said: you WILL burn out on this. Which means you will get sloppy. When I felt it was enough, I just finished the bit of greenstuff I made and let the whole project sit for a couple of hours or even days, until I got the itch to start again.

Once all the branches were sculpted in this way, I added skulls to the crack in the tree and started sculpting the main body of the tree. Until I ran out of greenstuff.

More coming soon (when I get my hands on more greenstuff). Please do feel free to comment. I am looking forward to your ideas. Part of the reason I am making this a public thread is to profit from the vast knowledge of all you beautiful people.

Before I even get started, I want to make a disclaimer here because sadly, it is needed.

I have seen the argument of racism crop up too easily these last years when somebody wants to do something outside of western culture. Most of the time, it comes down to people taking offence in certain models somebody made, because they feel like those models stereotypically portray or even mock certain common-held (but often wrong) ideas people have about such and such.

So let me be very clear here. I only hold the biggest respect for any culture. The whole idea of this project is to make a cool army that shows off how rich African culture is. This being said, I am not a black person myself, so I am of course not part of this cultural background. I have even thought long and hard if I should actually do this project. And then I thought: sod it. I am not a Scottish person either, but have never had any qualms about doing a Scottish army, so why should this be different?

IF you are a black person and you feel offended by anything I do, please let me know in a kind fashion. Know that there is no ill intent whatsoever from my part. I have only respect for this culture and I hope you will return this respect by assuming that if I happen to stumble over some boundaries, it was not to slight anybody in any way. I welcome the feedback and the discussion, as long as we can do it in a respectful manner.

Also: this will be a fantasy army, not a historical one. I will be mixing different cultures. I will be mixing different countries and time periods. The main idea is not to make something historically accurate, but to create something unique.

Now let’s start building.