GW Woods Project: The Base

I was planning on getting some of my terrain finished so I thought it would be a perfect project to do a step-by-step project post on. So below I will show pictures and describe how I painted and finished my GW woods. This will be a 2-part article with the first part dealing specifically with the base of the woods model.

As with any modeling project I started off with cleaning off any flash or odd looking bits I didn't want on my model. Luckily for the bases there isn't much cleaning required. Once cleaned I then primed the entire base with a black primer. I wasn't as picky about the primer as I am with an army model, I just did one nice even coat and that was good enough for me.

Now with the base primed it was time to start painting in the details. I decided the rocks were the best place to start. I used GW Codex Grey and began picking out all of the rocks on the base. I used a heavy dry brush technique and was not overly careful as I knew I would be using other colors to fill in the grass and roots. I just made sure I got a good base on all the rocks.

Once the rocks had a good base-coat of Codex Grey I then did a lighter dry brush of Vallejo Stonewall Grey. I used this as my first highlight to really bring out the edge details in the rocks. Once that was finished I used an even lighter dry brush of  GW Skull White for a final detail layer. At this point the rocks really start to come to life.

Ok with the rocks done I then moved onto the roots. I chose GW Bestial Brown to use as the base coat. Since the roots were a little more detailed than the rocks and ran through much more of the terrain, I carefully painted them. I paid extra attention when crossing over other details such as the rocks.

Now that the roots were painted I used a light dry brush of snakebite leather to bring out some of the details in the roots. Once that layer was finished I went over each root with a dry brush of codex gray. I know this seems like a weird color but after looking closely at trees around my house, their bark was brown but at the highest level the bark definitely had gray tones to it so I thought I would add this detail to my model.

I had all the details finished so now it was time to start painting the ground. I chose to use Vallejo Yellow Olive. I used a pretty watered down mix probably around 50/50 and when applying the paint I used more of a stippling effect. The watered down paint easily went into the space between the roots without getting onto the roots themselves. I used this technique until the entire base was done.

The next step was some green highlights. I dry brushed Vallejo Camouflage Green over all of the grassy details to bring in some highlights to these areas. I was careful not to get any green on the rocks or roots. I continued this process until I had highlighted the entire base.

Now came the final painting step. I used a stippling technique and proceeded to stipple first Vallejo Gory Red, then Vallejo Scrofulous Brown, followed by Vallejo Parasite Brown. I stippled small areas of each color over the entire base. I did this because I am going for a fall look to my woods and the colors gave the appearance of fallen leaves on the ground.

Next I moved onto clear-coating now that the painting was complete. Once the clear-coat was dry I then got ready to flock the base. I used GW Scorched Grass. To apply it I used a watered-down PVA glue. I have found the watered down glue holds just as well as straight PVA glue but it allows much more control over where the glue actually goes. Once the glue was in place I just sprinkled down the flock and all was done.

Well this concludes The first part of this project. I will be posting part two, GW Woods Project: The Trees, tomorrow. As always thank you for reading my blog and any feedback is welcome.