If a tree falls...Spirit of the forest diorama (77184)

[InvisibleThumb]

Here is my finished "spirit of the forest" diorama.  Including a bones bird familiar and metal squirrel familiar from 02756.  (The axe was from a Frostgrave plastic sprue - cultists or soldiers?)

 

wip is here

 

Pics

 

 

Oops - meant to put his in show off.  How do I fix it?  Mod help?

[OneBoot]

1 hour ago, InvisibleThumb said:

Oops - meant to put his in show off.  How do I fix it?  Mod help?

 

Mod to the rescue! ;)

 

Wow, it turned out SUPER AWESOME! And the title just fits the whole scene just perfectly, it tells the story with no further explanation! :) Do you have a picture from above to show your neat little koi fish? A lovely paint job, and an excellent base. Well done!

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Glitterwolf]

Excellent work!

[InvisibleThumb]

Thank you for the rescue and kudos @OneBoot!  I do have additional photos and was gonna wait until I've learned how to do spoilers to put any more on, but I don't see how it works on the phone.  So here are a couple more spoiled:

 

By request, the overhead:

 

a closer-up of the critters, including the blob of putty I am calling a koi:

 

 

One more at "ground level"

 

Thanks also xherman for for the kind words.  

[Tjrez]

great job, I really like your base, the animals and lil mushroom is a fantastic touch

[Baldur8762]

That is absolutely stunning work! You have done a marvelous job and the details are astounding!

[Guindyloo]

Really nice job! I especially like how much movement you were able to convey in the water.

[tiniest rhombus]

That is amazing

[LarsM]

Wow this is super nice!!

Great idea and story telling, and great paintedjob.

 

Did you use water effect or is the water ''just''  painted on? it has a lot of life and movement.

 

[SamuraiJack]

Is there a WIP for this?  I'd love to know more about which colors you used for the gray bark..

[LarsM]

Just read the Wip :o) .. amazing!

[VolksFest]

Amazing is the word indeed!! Awesome!

[InvisibleThumb]

Thanks so much for the nice comments everyone!

 

2 hours ago, LarsM said:

 

Did you use water effect or is the water ''just''  painted on? it has a lot of life and movement.

 

 

There are two different sections of water here: the stream and the koi pond.  For the pond it was pretty much just pouring water effect in, letting it sit, pop bubbles, and pour some more.  Little bit at a time and using a piece of wire to guide the effects toward the end.  I did not want to completely cover the fish, like it was coming to the surface to check things out and the water effect "climbed" the edges and fish a bit, which was fine with me since it looked like a result of the koi's surfacing.

 

The stream effect is mostly from a Happy Sepoku stamp on putty.  Their "ground - creek bed" stamp, which I find a little hard to use for human (30 mm) sized figures since the larger size of the textures does not fit easily on an inch base.  At any rate, I only used the stamp on half of the base and lined it up so the creek cut across the middle-ish.  I shored it up with a few actual stones pressed into the putty, but all of the stones in the middle of the creek are stamped from putty.

 

After painting, I did go over the water in the creek with two coats of gloss varnish.

 

Sorry that that explanation took so long.

 

2 hours ago, SamuraiJack said:

Is there a WIP for this?  I'd love to know more about which colors you used for the gray bark..

  

Yes, I linked to he WIP in the first post.  However the beginning is all mushroom folk so you may want to skip most of the first page.  It is also long winded.  I'll look back and try to dig up those paints for you.  I know I must have used Reaper's Stone Grey and Rainy Grey in there, since those are the two grey colors I have.  But I'm sure I mixed some others in too.

[InvisibleThumb]

I looked back and though I did not record it all, I do remember the following steps for the grey wood: 

 

base coat of stone grey over brown liner.

Very light wash of walnut brown.

Glazed on highlights of rainy grey.

Dry brush of a mix of rainy grey and moldy skin.

 

There may have been another wash with walnut brown or umber brown (probably a mix) between the last two steps.  But it would have been very little.

[Taskmaster99]

Beautiful work on both the mini and the base!!!!!