Magical woodland terrain- For Moonstone / Arcworlde / Frostgrave

Like everyone’s idea of a genius I’d left this project set to “private”. That will be the goblins doing, most likely….

Hopefully, you can now see how I constructed the forest logs, with DAS clay over foam blocks and greenstuff caps. Now time to slop some paint around

I’ve also airbrushed the crystals and the rock formations with a heavy-duty undercoat. There’s a small amount of highlighting on the crystals too. I will likely just paint and gloss them and the water and matt varnish the rocks. Once they’re painted of course

A hose down with was (home-made) Always DIY forr terrain – too expensive otherwise.

Having bought and painting these, there’s really only the Witches and the troll character to fully complete this Leshers.  I really don’t like the witch models at all, and will buy them if I can think how to base them. The troll is sculpted to my tastes but I can’t see any synergies for him.

I’ve been buying the few remaining sculpts for the Lesh that I don’t own. The box with Kavanagh was one of them. I don’t rate the human Lesh very highly as models and wanted to do something with this one.

It seemed obvious to me that he should be rolling around on a barrel filled with magical balls? I’m guessing it’s that obvious to everyone else too?

I’ve also bought and painted those new-ish trees for the Lesh. They really are fun to paint.

Back to my terrain. I really wnated to model this:

These are simply DAS  around a HDF core. The hardwork of painting come next for most of this stuff.

I really should have taken more photos but this is what I’ve ended up with:

How I got here is by having a HDF core for each log or stump. then, in greenstuff, sculpting the ends of the logs for  where they’d been chopped. Small rings of greenstuff arranged concentrically which I then chop into and sculpt when semi-set.

The outer bark of the log is modelled in DAS, set with varnish and primed grey.

The DIY sculpting should be clearer in these images

I’m omnivorous when it comes to what I’ll use when creating scenery. I”d like these pieces to outlast their first game however, so I’m using tried and trusted insulation foam, coffee stirers and green stuff. I’ve found that polyurethane (Sp?) varnish really works to set the pieces once I’ve carved them — they feel very fragile up until that point, being insulation foam and therefore mostly air.

If you’re curious as to the how, it is just carving away at the shapes till I have something I like. Some of the rocks or crystals are reinforced with cocktail sticks or pins. For now this is essentially foam and PVC glue. The end result is soft as fluff. A soak in varnish should cure this problem.

Next I need, fallen trees and to start thinking about colour schemes.

Having played a few games of Moonstone recently with some award-winningly drab grimdark scenery – out of necessity, obviously, I really wanted to create something that suits the fairy tale atmosphere of the game. There is some great terrain available on Etsy, but they’ll want money for it, and I want to keep mine where I can look at it.

So I’m going to recreate something very like theirs and hopefully use that as a jumping off point to something of my own.