This was the sort of project I kind of had to ‘force’ myself to do… but once I was in the middle of it, I started wondering why I had been so reticent before and now I am looking forward to more!

Anyway, I can now present the work of a single (and very lazy) Saturday afternoon – Drycha Hamadreth and an Awakened Wyldwood!

Drycha herself was a piece of cake, as I had already pretty much figured out her paint scheme from the Spite-Revenants I had already put together for her to lead. The only new things to consider were the honeycomb areas (Iyanden Yellow) and the bugs coming out of them (Dark Angels Green).

The only ‘hassle’ (and it really was very slight) was that in doing all the details (such as her skin, the honeycomb, vines and so forth) first meant that I had to be careful when doing the main Wyldwood coat on the bark. However, this is a small price to pay and if I had done the Wyldwood first I would have inevitably gone over some of the details, which would have meant more touch-ups, which would have taken more time…

It was better this way.

For the trees themselves, I cannot really take credit for how they turned out as I relied heavily on the video by Warhipster for these. However, the one big difference is that I went with a black undercoat and Slapchop drybrushing prep and you know… I think this is the better approach. Because of the shadows it creates, it makes the painting a lot faster and you can especially pay less attention to the undersides of the branches as they are, well, in shadow…

For the first tree, I went with Militarum Green with an Ogryn Camo drybrush to create a ‘normal’ tree. I am thinking that I will eventually need another two Wyldwoods for my Sylvaneth and the Militarum Green trees will end up being the majority.

For the next tree, I wanted something a bit more ‘magical’ and so opted for Flesh Tearers Red on the leaves, drybrushed with Fulgrim Pink (as suggested by Mr Warhipster).

The last tree had leaves painted with Druchii Violet and drybrushed with Pallid Wych Flesh. I have to say, I am starting to use Shades in conjunction with Slapchop more and more, rather than just relying on Contrasts, and they seem to work well.

The bases of these trees were dead simple – rocks are Basilicanum Grey, the bones Skeleton Horde, and the dirt Cygor Brown. Everything (including the trunks of the trees, but not the leaves) gets drybrushed lightly with Karak Stone afterwards. The final touches are some tufts of grass from GW and flowers from Gamers Grass (highly recommended, especially if you are doing Sylvaneth – they have quite a range to choose from).

The Wyldwoods are actually more of a pain to put together than they are to paint (and they really do not take that long to put together), so I am going to order another two of those, along with two more units of Spite-Revenants. Together with what I have already polished off, these will form the entirety of my ‘Outcast’ Sylvaneth. Led by Drycha, they will be a nice little force for narrative games when an army strays into the wrong part of a forest.

Once those are done, I think I need just one more unit of Kurnoth Hunters and then the Sylvaneth are getting dangerously close to being ‘complete’. Might have to investigate the odd Treelord Ancient before calling them done and dusted.

Something for later. For now, I have more Hammers of Sigmar on the table, and then I will be taking a bit of a dive into some more Orruks. Because, you know, Orktober as not quite enough for me…