New base for Stegadon

The original Micro Arts base...

AAARGH! Earlier today I was told that the base my Stegadon is resting on will not be allowed in the Lage Landen Painting Competition, due to it being prefab from (I believe) Micro Art Studio's - to be more precise: it is not GW, nor home made. So, I have to build a new base and paint it, within one week...yikes...!

Neverthelless a nice opportunity to keep up the blog with some interesting posts this week.
First off, I started with the basics for the base. I wanted to keep the heavy jungle theme, but I have to keep in mind that it cannot be so elaborate as the Micro Arts version.
I started with a broken path of tiles, by pressing these plastic bits in to a blob of milliput (this is actually the byproduct of hard plastics recycling processes...don't ask!!!).
Around this theme, I added some tree roots that are branching out everywhere. A few big ones, and a lot of smaller vines. Oh, and of course the broken off tree stump, it is a must ;)



The next step, after this has cured fully, will be gluing very fine sand to give the undergrowth some texture. But as I am comparing this with the original base (see top), I think I should sculpt some heavy leaves as well. Then I will add some other, thinner foiliage, mostly ferns. Since I do not have the time to order some etched brass stuff, I will create my own. Here you can see I have painted an ordinary sheet of paper on both sides. the side with the blends will be the topside, the darker one obviously the bottom side. Next step here will be drawing and carefully cutting out the fern leaves. We'll do that later...

Lastly, yesterday I have been painting with my good friend Gert, and as a distraction I painted a Skaven converted model. It has been a long time since I did Skaven, and this is one conversion I really liked. It's a Warlock Engineer with a Warplock Jezzail and Warlock Optics for enhanced sight. It CAN be used in-game, but I doubt he will be very usefull :) Nevertheless, an awesome model.