Jungle Fever!

While stuck at home, the urge hit me to try my hand at making some jungle bases. It came out of nowhere really, but I realized I had all the necessary parts. Using this awesome tutorial from Games Workshop, I set to it. I did stray from the video a bit and throw in some skulls and fallen branches (courtesy of a fallen branch in our yard....how meta).

The underside of the barbed bracken was under coated with Death Guard Green. I also strayed a bit from the tutorial on this, but I didn’t want to run the risk of any bare plastic showing on the final product. While this was drying, I slapped on some old GW texture paint (from four years ago...yikes!) and allowed it to dry. I glued in the branches and skulls while the texture paint was still damp. I waited until the texture paint was dry to glue in the flora. 

With everything dry and in glued in place, the bases were also given a spray of Death Guard Green. 

Once dry, I randomly picked out the leaves with Elysian Green and Warboss Green to give things some variety. The fallen branches were painted Steel Legion Drab. As the tutorial specified, everything was given a wash of Athonian Camoshade, then the plant bases, stems, and branches were given a wash of Agrax Earthshade. Everything was then dry brushed with Screaming Skull.

Speaking of skulls, they were heavily dry brushed with Screaming Skull and then given two coats of Skeleton Horde Contrast. I liked the “earthiness” of the color mixed with hints of the original Death Guard Green. It reminds me of examples I saw in my Anthropology classes back in the day at Fullerton College. 

This was also my first time using a light box! I'd picked it up for cheap on eBay a few months ago with the purpose of photographing both my minis and Teresa's jewelry. Full disclosure, I did adjust the brightness and contrast in editing but I feel it does the best job of showing the bases' details. 

Additionally, while running errands yesterday I hit Curio Cavern and went through their bits box. To my knowledge this is currently the only bits box in Northern Virginia (since the Island Games closed last year). I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of jungle pieces they had! I'll definitely be incorporating these on future bases and scatter terrain.

Now that I have jungle bases, I think it's only natural to put proper figures on them.

Yup, the classic Catachan Jungle Fighters for Warhammer 40k. I used to hate these guys when I was first getting into the hobby but they've grown on me over the years. Plus they're not the ubiqitious Cadians that every Imperial Guard Astra Militarum player seems to have. They're different and that's something that really appeals to me.