Growing the Oak of Ages
Entry posted by Stevewren
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After Blood and Glory last weekend I came home pumped up for some new and exciting Hobby challenges. The first thing I decided to do was create my very own Oak of Ages to be the centrepiece of a new set of Sylvaneth terrain. I've purchased a Grassy Plains 2 FAT mat and I realised I didn't have any 'green' terrain to go with it. So I started raiding the terrain bin....
A while ago I'd bought a big piece of Aquarium terrain to make a realm gate with, and I knew that my son had collected some twigs and sticks recently that were drying on the porch outside the house. With these as a basis I started gluing things together. I had an old 6" base from my free wood elf wood from 8th edition which was the perfect size for a base so I mitre bonded the tree stump down. I then Dremmelled some bits off half a realm gate to make it roughly fit the gap that was in the wooden piece. I added some random playbark to hide some of the gaps and then started applying cheap air dry clay to add texture. To make it look like bark I used a piece of playbark to texture it and push it into the gaps. This was much faster than using a sculpting tool.
When the clay was dry I went over it all with watered down PVA as the clay doesn't always stick as well as you would like. The next job was to stick on some big sticks to the stump to start making the canopy. I just mitre bonded them in place, trying to find places that had gaps and grooves tap they fitted in to.
Once these dried I used a pack of Woodland scenics tree armatures to make all the smaller branches. I just went round the tree drilling small holes in and pushing in the tree armatures. Once dry these need twisting and shaping. Even after this they don't look too realistic at this point, but hopefully foliage will help cover this up...
I then attacked the whole thing with spray cans. I just sprayed it in bursts with all sorts of browns, greys and whites and then dry brushed areas. I'm going to come back to add more detail later so I wasn't too worried about how this all looked. I just wanted it all blended together and all the air clay covered up. The only thing I tried to do was make sure that the realm gate part was lighter than the rest of the tree.
All of my Sylvaneth have a lot of foliage and plants on them, so this was always going to be a very green, summery looking tree. I couldn't use my usual stuff though (Woodland Scenics fine foliage) as it is £17.00 a pack, and I'd need quite a bit for the tree, making it prohibitively expensive. Instead I ordered some wire wool. To start with I piled it on, but after some Twitter feed back from @Bishmeister and @Painted by G I teased it all out a lot more so that I ended up with a much more natural look. I then used an entire can go green spray paint to undercoat the wire wool.
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When that was dry I went out into the garage, got a big mixing bowl and started making a bowl of tree flock, pretty much exhausting my clump foliage stocks! I used quite big clumps and a variety of sizes and textures. I then went round the tree a bit at a time covering it with spray glue and tipping the clump foliage on. Once the whole tree was covered I gave it a good shake, turned it upside down and went over any patches that I had missed. Once I was happy I then sprinkled over some fine turf mix as well to even up the coverage and fill in any small gaps.
Once this dried a bit I mixed water and PVA together and poured it into a spray bottle and generously coated the whole tree. This should make it fairly durable. I'll also add some matt varnish as well as I want to eliminate any shine from any PVA glue that has ended up on the tree itself.
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