Dark Eldar Diorama – the new base

The last week has seen quite a lot of progress on the new base for my Dark Elf diorama. It’s a good feeling to be building something again after the deconstruction of the old base. Having reassembled the monoliths into a single structure I then chose a 60mm resin cube to use as a plinth.  I’ve use bits from the Games Workshop plastic woods kit (left over from earlier projects) to make up an old stump.

The various parts were then assembled on/into a rocky hillock made for the most part from green stuff.

I’ve experimented with the tree stumps in an effort to get more texture onto the plastic kits. Once I had undercoated the stumps I applied a layer of crackle paint to them and then worked over this with a mix of dry brushing and washes. The finished effect isn’t bad but in the future I need to be bolder with it and really push the texture to the fore. For the moment the tree stumps are OK but they will need more work with texturing, painting and the application of leaves and moss. I’ll do this as a part of painting the overall base.

 

I’m almost there with the basic assembly on the new base – just a little more work with the green stuff to hide the joins and it’s done. I’ve used an assortment of stones as texture stamps to get some texture into it and a few pieces of basing slate to give some harder edges here and there.

I had intended to incorporate some element of ancient Eldar ruins on the base. At the moment it looks to me like that might be a case of trying to include too much but I’ll see how things develop. There is a lot of painting and scenic detailing to add so I need to keep a certain amount of flexibility about the detail. One major development is my decision to give the base an overall bleak wintery theme. It looks like I’ll be seeing more than my share of snow and ice before Christmas!