Back Again and 40K Trees!

What Happened?
Well it’s been a little more than a year since my last entry.  I used to wonder how people would let blogs go so long without an update now I know.  LIFE it just happens.  In any case I have been busy and sadly the blog has just been a luxury I couldn’t afford.  My hope is to be more active this year so we will see.   Plus I feel guilty since every time I check on this blog I seem to pick up a few more followers.  Seems the content is good even if the frequency sucks.  In any case even though the blog has been dormant my hobby life has not.  Mainly I focused on knocking how terrain projects.  I had some old objective type pieces from Forgeworld and some old 40K trees I wanted to finish.  I have a Realm of War Table close to done and wanted some nice terrain to put on it.  In this entry I’ll do a review of the 40K Jungle Trees.

40K Jungle Trees

I have a number of sprues of the old 40k Jungle trees.  You see these on occasion in terrain used in White Dwarf and they were also included with the original Tau Battleforce.  They are interesting trees I wasn’t sure how to use.  I have had them sitting in the basement for years.  The large Oval base from GW that came around for flyers is very useful for terrain.  I use this base for a number of items.  In this case I decided to build a small rain forest terrain base.  

The brush I used a thick craft brush

You can see the talus and texture here

I used four trees, also ordered the jungle swarm from the GW and a skeleton from Secret Weapon to provide some variety.  The base was built up with Liquitex Ceramic Stucco.  This is a wonderful texture gel that can be mixed with paint or applied straight and primed and then painted.  I went with the later technique.  I also used talus to provide some rocky features.  Use an old brush or a craft brush you don't paint your minatures with.  The base was airbrushed and then drybrushed.  I also used wash on the tree bases to get deeper shading and wood grain.  I used Vallejo still water for small streams running between the trees.

Older bottle of the stucco the label looks different these days you find it in art and general hobby stores

This is the texture very smooth with a fine grit

I like the results and plan to paint up the rest of the trees in a similar style.  I have enough for about 5 bases which will make for a decent rainforest.  A few points I used a variety of colors to give a more vibrant look versus a uniform color for all and I’m happy with the results.  I glued the trees before I started, next time I will try to fit the trees together without gluing to allow for better access while painting.  In one of the photos you see guardsman legs off to the side.  I used those to create footprints which you can see in the finished picture below off to the left.

Skeleton above and snake from jungle swarm footprints to the left

Rocky formation to the left gives variety to the base

 Next time another project I completed from the Terrain Objective bin.