Sylvaneth realmgate construction

Almost no time to paint this weekend as I had to construct a second realmgate for the upcoming campaign and time is short. I had a free hand (and a lot of plastic Citadel trees) although the concept of a giant tree was given as a starting point. For the curious after the first stage it looked like this.

More leaves were added later on.

As I had no real idea how to construct this I started out measuring a Citadel tree and multiplying al the dimensions by four. Then I cut some polystyrene to size so I had a solid base to work from.

Beautiful, no extra work required.

Next up was cutting the edges of the polystyrene and adding a Baleful Realmgate to the model.

measure once, cut twice? Or was it the other way around?

It fits!

I was planning to sort of cut and sand the form of a tree in this when my eyes were caught by a bunch of branches left over from pruning a tree in the garden. On a whim I decided to cut these to size and make an interesting shape. I also decided I needed a bigger base beneath this model so I cut and sanded that as well. Then it was off to the garden with a hot glue gun and a jigsaw.

Adding branches to make treebark

Adding even more branches

You guessed it. I added more branches!

Adding branches to the top. It almost looks like a tree now.

With the wood in place I cut the stump of some assembled trees and glued these to the ends of the branches or to interesting hollows in the tree. After that I glued some extra trees together. As the last step I used loose branches to cover more of the tree. Then I decided to add some interesting details by abusing a Sylvaneth Treelord Ancient.

Get off my lawn!

I also added a Dryad to the tree, it will give me an interesting detail paint later on.

Suprise!

To finish up I used a bunch of spare leaves to cover the inside of the Realmgate.

That's a Sylavaneth Realmgate.

More leaves where added to the plastic 'branches' and the sides of the tree. Naturally I forgot to take pictures of this step. I also added PVA with mud to the base of the construction.

Not pictured, more leaves and mud.

I had a bit of time left and most of the construction was (more or less) dry. So I base coated the entire construction black and then added a second quick base coat of Mournfang Brown to it. This is where the result so far.

Pictured here: more leaves.

And here is the top view.