Shepherd of the Forest

This is a rather special Ent. After building the plastic kit I had a head and a couple of right hands left. That's obviously the basis of another Ent but how to make the rest of it?

Basically, every time we went for a walk over the year, I collected some sticks. Always deadfalls - after all, Treebeard would not approve of me cutting  healthy trees down. 

Walks in Yorkshire, Wales, the highlands of Scotland - every part of  the countryside of mainland Britain contributed some elements. 

Then it was a matter of construction. Some drilling and pinning and a lot of Gorilla Gel.

I added a couple of branches from Dryads to break up the outline.

Almost by accident it appears that I made an Ent with attitude. Just looking at him you can hear the Beegees.

I then fastened him to the base and green stuffed the root structure round the feet.

I painted him using the one of the greatest strengths of contrast paints, I think - the ability to easily blend them to get natural colours. 

The leaves were painted in the traditional way and then I added some foliage from my stash.  

And so here is the current army of Fangorn Forest. 

Very happy with this one and obviously it has a lot of sentimental meaning to the family as it represents our travels in the countryside - something I think Professor Tolkien would have approved of. 

Dr N R Gull's Patent Medicine and Pandemonium Shadow Show - Papa Doc himself

On the fourth night, the Burgomeister did not awake at all. His fat wife rolled over and screamed as she saw the wet mess her husband had become. Flies crawled over his eyes. Outside, she heard piping music.

The Carnival had come to town.

*****

This has come out pretty much how I wanted. One of those rare occasions when what I saw in my head translated very neatly to what came out in reality.

The construction on this was very simple  (I seem to say that a lot) with only one new technique required.

The wagon was a 4Ground General Wagon kit and the covering was tissue paper soaked in watered down PVA - which was the new technique I had to learn. It turns out to be very easy and something I think I might use a lot in future.

I filled the back of the wagon with Nurglings - because why wouldn't you? - and added some accouterments from the bits box.

The  horses are from the deepest, darkest recesses of the bits pile:

For 30 years I've had that box stashed; the old plastics have a lovely slender quality which would help with the balance of the composition. 

The base was constructed out of some blue foam, sand and tea leaves.

Papa Doc was bashed together out of bits and pieces. The base was then painted to suggest the disease and decay the carnival leaves behind.

And then a few bits and pieces of thread for reins and brass rod for harnesses. 

Well, I'm done. There's always a melancholy sense when you reach the end of a project. On the plus side, this has turned out exactly how I wanted; I am very happy with the overall look of the carnival as well as being very proud of some of the individual characters. There's also the satisfaction of knowing that these are unique, each handcrafted: no-one will ever have a set like these. That's a rather nice feeling.

If you want to see all the work collected in one place, I've put a page on the blog to record this project which you can access here.