I painted these 15mm palms earlier this week, but it’s been so cold in the garage overnight I neglected to take photos of them until this afternoon. The irony of creating miniature palm trees in the middle of winter does not escape me!
Here’s the two bases I’ve put together so far, providing a little shade to a couple of New Zealand 6pdr portees driving into a North African town.
The palms were spray primed with a matt black enamel can, while the bases and stones where primed with Citadel ‘Skull White’. I primed the trees first by masking off the bases with some A4 paper and then wrapped the trunks with masking tape and sprayed the base.
These days I prime all my terrain, simply because it makes the acrylic paint adhere better and extends the gaming life of every piece you create. Black priming is also great for covering the mixed materials used in scratch building and I find your construction can actually be pretty sloppy as long as you nail everything with a good spray primer before painting.
The trunks were painted with a quick three colour drybrush scheme I use for almost any kind of wood. The leaves were also hit with a layer of ‘Barrista’ to brown them prior to drybrushing with straight GW Catachan Green and then a Bleached Bone/Catachan Green mix for a lighter coat. Normally I wouldn’t recommend using GW’s expensive figure paints for terrain, but painting a few fronds won’t empty the pot.
This second shot also shows how I’ve wrapped the trunk with epoxy putty, something I neglected to take a decent photo of for the 15mm Palm Tree mini-tutorial.
I’ve got another three palms ready to be based out in the garage and I’ll probably slap them down on a larger round base and make a muddy little oasis for the poor bloody infantry to cool their feet in.