As the title suggests, I have been hard at work at Shire terrain this week and I have a little bit to show off. I am working on getting trees ready for the Maggot’s Farm scenario and while the first one has not gone quite according to plan, I think it looks reasonably good now. The one thing that was smart was buying pre-made trees from Woodland Scenics. It takes a lot of the grunt work out of making trees and while I don’t think the foliage is necessarily perfect straight out of the box, it looks good overall. The difficulty I’m having is finding flock, which I use to highlight the trees, that looks good. I bought some Woodland Scenics stuff and I didn’t like how it looked so I had cover it up with other flock that I did like. If you see some tan colored speckles, that’s a bit of the flock that I don’t like peeking through. The other piece of terrain was just a way to use up a small MDF base that doesn’t work well for trees. I thought a nice little patch of wild flowers could add some character to any scenario I’m playing.
Truthfully, the pictures I took are not quite up the standard I would like but I think future terrain pieces will look a bit nicer so I’ll shoot for better pictures there. I am curious to see how this looks as I get more on the mat. I think the terrain I’m making doesn’t match this mat as well as I thought it would but that’s okay. I can always try and hunt down a brighter mat in the future (or if I ever have the space, make a board). I have seven more trees ready to be based up so it will be a bit before I have them all done and ready to use.
I also painted up this shifty character recently. I think he came out pretty well overall and it is an interesting sculpt. You can kind of paint him like a ringwraith but his face is basically obscured by his hair and it is all but impossible to paint Wormtongue’s eyes. I would have liked to have painted them but oh well. I look forward to varnishing and basing him in the near future as that will give him a bit more color and variety.
I have been painting up something special in that the paint job quality is really high. I’m not quite at a point where I feel ready to share but it should kick off a really cool project that I can chip away at when I feel like doing my best painting. I have a bunch more terrain to make too in the coming weeks. More cropland, more trees, and hedges too so I should be plenty busy in March and hopefully have some exciting updates in the near future.
Kuribo's Painting 
I’ve been negligent at looking at blogs lately, glad I stopped by on yours today. Trees have always been my bane and am glad that yours has come out so well. You can always try dry brushing some other shades of green if you want more variety in the color of the foliage.
If you have a Michaels craft store nearby, you might want to pop in and look at their Greenhouse Tiny Treasures, they have miniature shrubs and trees on sale. Not Woodland Scenics quality but neither is the price.
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Always a pleasure to have you stop by, Bret! I think I can get better at tree-making and I’m very much experimenting with things to see what I can do to improve. I dabbled a bit with drybrushing the first tree but wasn’t sure how well it was working. I may have little choice but to try and drybrush the lighter color trees as I don’t know if other flock will blend the way Woodland Scenics does. I’ll give it a shot when I get to those trees and report back.
I have seen that line of miniatures. It is very curious that Michael’s has been pushing those in the last couple of years and next time I’m out at Michael’s I’ll give them a look! Thanks for the suggestion, as always!
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Looking good. Trees can be a right sod to build, especially when you want a lot. I do like wormtongue.
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I completely agree. Making trees is not one of my favorite parts in the hobby. Thanks for the kind words on, Wormtongue as well 🙂
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It’s all looking very nice! I think it’s going to look especially awesome in the scenarios. 🙂
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Thanks, Gero! I certainly hope so as I’m really itching to play again 🙂
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Great job on the bases and with that WrymTongue. I think I mentioned that I use the premade trees from WS too and I think they definitely look good, and look great with some extra effort like you have done. I also think the pics are fine but am looking forward to seeing all your efforts put on the table together. 😀
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Thanks, Stew! Its funny because the pre-made trees only save you from having to glue but honestly even that saved work and time is such a relief! I will try to buy pre-made trees from now on when possible. I can’t wait to get all of this done and play a game as well. It has been half a year or something like that at this point which is way longer than I was anticipating.
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These look fantastic. Do you have any advice or a paint guide for painting Worm? Just discovered your blog and plan to do alot of reading of past articles. Starting to develop my own terrain making and looking forward to starting a similar Hobbiton project etc
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Thanks, m2project! I did not write up a guide on how to paint Worm but I’d be happy to share some advice on it.
If you’re familiar with layering, that is the painting technique I used and you will want to have a wet palette to try it. I basecoated him with a 50/50 mix of Abaddon Black and Eshin Gray and then I slowly added a lighter gray to that mix and highlighted the raised areas where the highlights would hit. With each layer you paint less and less total area on the mini until only the lightest parts are being painted with the “lightest” gray paint. It is not the easiest thing to describe but hopefully that helps. It is also a great technique for painting things like the Ringwraiths.
I hope you find this site useful and if you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to ask. I’d be happy to follow your hobby progress if you make a website or are on Instagram, just let me know! Always room for one more in The Shire 🙂
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Nice work on old Grimy Gríma!
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