CLXVII. Legen: More Willows and Livestock

Efforts to equip the table for my group AoS28 project continue. This week I bring the remaining three willow scenery pieces and a couple farm animals for the village.

I've shown a few WIP photos of the first willow earlier. This time I took more pictures during the process, for those interested.

Started by building up a little hill of polystyrene on top of an MDF base, which I then covered with DAS airdrying clay. For the clay to stick better, I always put some PVA glue on the surface first.

 I build up the tree trunks in layers over toothpicks. Again, PVA helps it all stick together better.

After two layers, they had some bulk. They look like a bunch of knobs, don't they... 

I sculpted the roots with DAS.

The final layer of DAS contains most of the texture. I use my sculpting tools and a large brush with stiff bristles to achieve the textures and details in wet clay.

 When all the sculpting was done and cured, I flocked the bases.

The flock then got a covering of water+plaster+PVA. The flock soaks this in, and when it dries it hardens. This can then be painted normally, and more flock, tufts and other foliage added on top.

The last thing to do was the branches. It's wire, cut to length and bent to look natural. I drilled a bunch of holes in the trunk and glued the branches into the holes. Mixed in a few roots as well.

This concludes the work on the willows and I can cross them off my list. Now I can move on to more interesting scenery, like the peasant houses of Dol, and the windmill.

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To add life and extra flavour to our rural battlefield, I wanted to include some farm animals. Now, there was a bit of a dilemma here. If I make them just mundane cows, pigs and chickens, I can use the same minis for my other setting as well. However, in that case I'm missing a chance to create new fauna unique to the Isles of Brume. The alien critters approach prevailed, and I set to work making up the first couple of minis. I had a toy cow and calf, which served as the base. I don't have a name for the species yet. Any ideas?

I've now run out of plastic farm animals, so I need to go look for cheap ones again in order to make more livestock for Dol. I find that I really enjoy painting animals.

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I'd also like to share some new developments from the others. Rebecca began putting together her warband of centaur-like people. Filip has made a gargant for Nerod's marauding herd and kicked off his warband with this Forest Knight.