Basing trees in woods

[DGC]

I thought I would post up a step by step of basing trees in woods.

 

Woods provide great cover for your troops and look great on the table but I have come across a couple of problems like minis falling off the terrain, not enough room for your unit on the base and the problem of the trees you use not standing up on their own. GW sell a pretty awesome plastic Woods set that gets around most of these problems but may not suit the trees or terrain you normally use.

 

This tutorial will hopefully adress all the problems so you can use whatever trees you have and can easily be adapted to fit your own style using whatever bits you have at hand.

 

For this tutorial you will need the following bits but feel free to substitute any with your own favored products / brands etc.

 

Materials

Trees

40mm round bases

Base board (Masonite, Heavy card etc)

3mm Foamcore board

Powdered plaster (Redimix, tile grout - whatever you use)

Small broken dry twigs, some stones or similar, basing sand/gravel and static grass

 

Tools

Something to cut your chosen base board with (as I use a type of expanded plastic board I can get away using a heavy duty utility knife)

File

Something to cut holes (I used a Compass Cutter)

Super Glue, PVA Glue

Sculpting tool (for this topic I used the pointed end of a clean Kebab stick) and some Green Stuff or similar.

 

First off you need to decide how big your woods are going to be. Place some of your chosen trees on a piece of board to get an idea of how many you will need (remeber that the trees do not have to be touching but too big a gap will look a little sparse when you try to claim that cover save), mark out then cut the board to shape.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0955.jpg

 

Using this base as a template, cut out a similar piece of foamcore

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0956.jpg

 

Before you glue the two pieces together you will need to mark out where the trees will go and cut out some 41mm holes (the extra 1mm is to take into account the paint that will be applied to the tree bases, adding just that wee bit more to the 40mm base diameter) and check the 40mm bases fit in easily. When you are happy, bevel the edges of the boards, glue them together with PVA and allow to dry. In the following picture you can see I added a further piece of Foamcore at the back to add a little extra height and give a bit more character to the base.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0957.jpg

 

While the boards are drying you can get on with your trees.

 

Take as many trees and bases as needed

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0946.jpg

and carefully pull the trees away from their stumps.

 

File the bottoms of the stumps flat (be careful as some stumps may be made from resin - wear a mask)

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0947.jpg

 

then glue them to the 40mm bases using Super Glue

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0948.jpg

 

Next we are going to blend the stumps into the bases using Green Stuff (GS)

 

I tried two different ways of doing this. For the first method, mix up some GS and lay a ring around the base of the stump.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0950.jpg

 

Using your chosen sculpting tool blend the GS into the base using the roots of the stump as a guide.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0951.jpg

 

The second method just involves adding bits of GS to the root ends and giving them a bit of detail.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0952.jpg

 

Now back to the base whilst the GS cures

 

Mix some plaster into a thick paste and add some PVA. Spread this goo over the base to blend the board and Foamcore together and to make up any difference in height between the base and the 40mm bases.

 

Now we are going to add some extra detail to the base, just enough to add some character but not so much that we won't be able to stand figures up on it before the plaster mix dries to hard.`

 

Here I have used tree bark pushed into the plaster while it was still wet to simulate rocks,

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0959.jpg

 

some small twigs (from a dead Lavender plant) bent and snapped then glued into place and some patches of small gravel http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0960.jpg

 

Allow to dry.

 

The last part is to now cover the base with sand using slightly watered down PVA

 

Repeat the basing on the tree stumps

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0953.jpg

 

and allow all the bits to dry then finally give the base and stump bases a thin wash of watered down PVA to seal everything and allow to dry overnight.

 

Next day test fit the trees again to make sure they fit.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0964.jpg

 

 

The next stage is painting.

 

First, undercoat everything seperately and allow to dry then test fit again - we really don't want any problems now. (If neccesary run a file around the edge of the base to get it to fit again).

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0965.jpg

 

As I wanted an aged look I lightly base coated the stumps and twigs with Scorched Brown. For the first stage of highlighting I added Codex Grey to the brown and lighly damp brushed the stumps. The next stage was more grey to the mix followed by adding a tiny touch of white to the mix. On one side of the stump I wanted to give the impression of moss and algae so I added a touch of Goblin Green to the third highlight mix and lightly drybrushed half the stump. A second lighter drybrush with a little Scorpion Green added to the mix and a final extreme highlight of pure Scorpion Green finished them of.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0967.jpg

 

The rocks on the bases were base coated 50/50 Chaos Black/Codex Grey The next highlight was done by adding more Codex Grey followed by one with a dash of Fortress Grey added to the mix and finally with a little Skull White as an extreme edge highlight. This was repeated on the rocks on the stump bases. Lastly a similar method for moss and algae was used to give some added colour

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0968.jpg

 

The last bit is the ground colour. All my bases are done the same with the same colours so they go well together but use your own scheme so it fits with the rest of your terrain.

I gave the base a light wash of very thinned Scorched Brown. When this had dried I gave a fairly heavy drybrush of Bestial Brown followed by a lighter drybrush of Bubonic Brown and a final light drybrush of Bleached Bone (the same was obviously done to the stump bases)

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0972.jpg

 

When everything was dry I applied static grass in a patchy style to bring it all together.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0973.jpg

 

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0974.jpg

 

The last thing to do is to glue the trees back into the stumps with super glue and place them on the base - voila

 

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0975.jpg

 

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0976.jpg

 

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/New%20trees/DSCN0977.jpg

 

 

Hope you find this useful

 

DGC

[ravenguard2010]

Awesome. Cheers.

[ShinyRhino]

Nice work. Very finely detailed.

 

One suggestion I'd make is painting the "holes" in the same brown as the rest of the base. That way, when you move them to make room for models, yu don't have the black void effect on the table.

[augustmanifesto]

very, very nice tutorial. what plastic did you use for the base / where can it be purchased?

[Zedrenael]

I like this idea. I will try it here shortly.

[Foxmarine]

Thank you so much

[6262]

As a terrain building n00b how do you create those circular cuts on the foamboard? Thanks for the tutorial.

[DGC]

The hole was cut with a compass cutter, basically a sharp blade in place of a pencil lead.

 

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s47/DGC_album/modeling%20step%20by%20step/80-414-thickbox.jpg

[Wolftracks8]

Beautiful work.

[arizonajirt]

looks good. i will be using this shortly. where did you get those trees from? i couldnt find them on the GW site.

[Jacinda]

I don't know where he got those particular trees, but anywhere you buy models should have something similar. Just look around the model train area for some trees.

 

For what it's worth, 40K scale is 1:40, more or less. O scale (1:48) fits well with 40K, but it is not all that popular of a scale for railroad hobbyists. It will also give you trees that tower over your vehicles and dreadnoughts. In a similar manner, S scale (1:64) fits 40K for larger natural structures like trees but is also hit and miss to find things in that scale. Mostly what you will find are in the HO (Half O - 1:87), N (1:160) and Z (1:220) scales. These scales will get you trees that are the shorter than your marine (Z scale) to about twice as tall depending on the scale and type of tree being modeled.

 

And now that I have thrown all that out there, Woodland Scenics sells their trees by height. Just get the ones that look about right to you.

[Ironfoe]

Oh man, those look as good as the GW produced pictures.