I've been wanting to add some kind of cattail to the swamp base for awhile. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I was a kid, the swamp across the tracks from my house always had them. Thus I associate cattail with swamps and wetlands more than over grown weeds. So I found some down time while working on my big project to make up some cattails for the swamp base and here's the results.
I started with more of the broom bristles and looked for thin shafts with no branching on them. Then I cut various lengths, longer than I needed so I had room to work. These were set aside while I took some green stuff and rolled it up.
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| Bristles and green stuff ready for crafting. |
Once the green stuff was ready, I started taking small sections of it and laying on the sticks and rolling it around between my fingers. This gave the putty the corn dog look of the cattail. I made 6 total, so I could pick the best of them and in case I wasn't sure how many I'd need total. I then painted them with watered down Reaper Leather Brown and stuck them into a piece of foam for drying.
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| They're starting to look like cattails! |
I highlighted the sticks by mixing some white in with the Leather Brown and then painted the heads with Muddy Brown. These were then washed with GW Devlan Mud and the sticks were rehighlighted and the heads were painted with more Muddy Brown. I didn't want to do too many highlights on the heads, because cattails generally are a rich dark brown, so after that I left them be.
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| Fully painted cattails. |
Once the paint was dry I then started to place them onto the base. This was kinda a pain in the ass, because they are heavier than the plain sticks and I couldn't hang it upside down to let them dry. So, because of this I needed to basically hold each one in place until the glue tacked up enough to let it stand on it's own. But now I have 3 cattails in place next to the giant rock. I was thinking of adding one more to it, but I'm really thinking that these are plenty.
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| Cattails in place! |
So now, I think the base is ready! All that needs to be done with it now is to pour the water effects into it and then paint Silas, which you can see he has already been primed. Maybe if I can get to it, I'll pour the resin in tomorrow after work. But I'm not sure, since I have a lot of artwork left to design for the other project and really can't afford to lose any time on it. But we'll see.
