Not Much Painting Going On...

 But I Have Been Attempting to Sculpt! An Ent

I have been focusing on doing a bit of sculpting over the last few weeks. I wanted a large Ent to form part of the large monster contingent for the Fae. There are plenty of nice Ent models out there but it is a bit of challenge to sculpt your own and I may add a few purchased ones later.

Obviously sculpting a Ent doesn't have some of the challenges associated with sculpting a human etc.  Plus the larger size also helps for the novice.  I have completed a couple of other sculpts including a smaller Ent and the Fungal Shrooms (see earlier blog posts under the Green Stuff tag). But this is the most technically difficult one, I have attempted to sculpt  so far. 

I have been using a mixture of two parts yellow/grey Milliput to one part green stuff. Which seems to combine the advantages of green stuff without the tackiness. As well of making the green stuff go a bit further.  This idea as well as a great tutorial on sculpting trees came from Borgnine's Miniature Painting blog (Borgnine's Miniature Painting: Coniferous Tree Trunk Tutorial (borgninespainting.blogspot.com) Which I used to create the bark texture  and as a basis for painting my Ent. 

The other major source of inspiration for this miniature was the Ent done by Time Prow of Diehard miniatures Treeman, Beechspur - Bestiary - Diehard Miniatures. I really like the look of this miniature. He has a great sense of presence. I know mine doesn't look that similar but I did say inspired by and not copied from!

The Ent was sculpted over seven sessions to allow time for each section to dry before moving on to the next section. It is very easy to ruin the bit you have done by trying to do too much in one go. I also spent a lot of time making the wire armatures particularly for the arms and hands.  As I wanted each finger to be supported by wire frame. I used paperclips for the wire armatures as they are cheap, readily available and flexible.

In the case of the shoulders by leaving the wire ends exposed,  this gave me something to fix the arms on to a later stage. I would like to say I planned it that way but it was a lucky decision that worked out. 

The side branches were made from left
over branches from GW Dryads. 

A 28mm Ral Partha Hobgoblin for scale. 

I was undecided about the head at this stage
 and was thinking about adding branches
but it just didn't look right. 

Plus some other WIP

I also found time to make a killer snail, using a water snail shell I found whilst cleaning the pond. Which will join the Fae sprite horde. 

Beware the killer snail

Rob