Treemen

Warhammer: The Old World

One of the things that has me excited about the new Warhammer ruleset is that the armies are self-contained in the main army books, so I can start planning out all sorts of armies without having to wait for them to be re-released for the game. Given that I have a decent collection of models that will be useable in it, I’ve decided I’ll have the most fun if I work on models for the Old World in general rather than painting one army after another. This means picking up what I feel like painting most and getting it done! Last week we had Tomb Kings, this week Wood Elves!

After the base sizes for the new game were announced for models, I had a hunt through my collection for models staying on the same base size that I could paint while I wait for my Tomb Kings starter set. I came across these treemen which have been sitting undercoated in a case for close ten years, and I decided they deserved some paint after their long entombment! These actually belonged to my wife when she had a period of interest in tabletop gaming (as a result of which we met!), and I’ve inherited them since.

We have 3 variants here, 2 treemen, a treeman ancient, and the named character Durthu. I’ve taken photos of each side of each, and put them into a slideshow for each model so you should be able to scroll sideways though them.

Treemen

Treeman Ancient

Durthu

From a painting perspective, these models were painted in a rather freeform manner (apart from Durthu which had much more of a plan, detailed below). I first took to them with the airbrush and put on random patches of greens, browns, blues, greys. I then started highlighting the models, roughly following the patchy undercoat. This required a lot of mixing, as the patches of airbrushed paint blended into each other. So no paint recipes here, each area was done on its own and the ratios based on whatever made sense there. I think this gave a really naturalistic look to these models as trees are far from uniform in nature, being covered in all kinds of mosses, lichen, mud, etc.

This was an extremely fun way to paint and I’ll definitely replicate that on the rest of the forest spirit models in the army.

Durthu as I mentioned above had a much more deliberate plan in his painting, driven by my experiences walking in the local bush land here in Perth. It’s rather common to come across burnt bush around here, either from bushfires, or burn offs done to reduce the impact of future bushfires. The forests end up black after these events, but nature here is built to live through these events, and when rain comes life springs anew from the ashes, revealing what I think its a pretty amazing sight: bright green new growth surrounded by pitch black burnt forest. Here are some photos I’ve taken of what I’ve seen here.

Having grown up near temperate European forests, I find this quite an amazing sight and have always wanted to paint a model that tries to replicate the effect. That’s what I tried to go for on Durthu, his main trunk is blackened by fire, but bright new leaves are coming up.

Dwarfs were the first Warhammer models I bought, but Wood Elves were my first “proper” (i.e. built to a decent size) army for Warhammer. I have a lot of models for that army, although most are in a dire state so I’m excited to repair and repaint them and get them back on the table with the new ruleset.

I’m using these new rules to indulge my love of painting whatever I feel like at any given time so I’m not sure what I’ll be painting next! Potentially some more terrain for the Border Princes campaign, we’ll see when I sit down at the painting table next!

13 thoughts on “Treemen”

  2. Once I saw these on Instagram, I was excited to come over here and comment. They look fantastic and I really like your inspiration for them too. There’s a lot of different ways you can go with the Sylvaneth but I like to see people taking inspiration from nature.

    There’s some interesting nuggets of information in here too. You lived in Europe and then moved to Oz? That must have been quite a change in climate, let alone the time zones! And meeting your wife through our hobby has to be pretty rare too. There are more women painting miniatures nowadays and GW tends to over-promote them which is a digression, but it still isn’t all that common!

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    1. Thanks Jeff! I grew up in France (inspired by those French GD painters!) before moving to Australia a bit over 17 years ago. Weirdly enough this year marks my having lived in France and Australia roughly the same amount of time. As you might expect those are quite different places, but it’s been an interesting broadening of experience!

      And yes not necessarily common to meet ones wife through wargaming! The gender balance definitely has shifted a bit over the last few years which is no bad things but it still is pretty skewed and at the time it was very skewed!

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      1. Zut alors! I never would have guessed it. I very much enjoyed visiting Paris and hope to go back and see more of France as a whole one day. Not to offend any Aussies, but I’d probably miss the French food a bit if I were you 🙂 And no, I won’t sound like a British person and call it prison food in Oz either! 😀

        You said it well, mon ami! I don’t live near a GW store any longer but the only woman I ever saw in one was my wife when she came in to retrieve me from time-to-time haha!

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      3. I’m glad to hear it! I occasionally try and make some food that I enjoyed in Paris as it isn’t that easy to find authentic French food in the US. A lot of what’s available skews towards fine dining which can be pretty expensive.

        For Australian food, its the opposite problem. There is a chain restaurant here (which you may have heard of) called Outback Steakhouse which purports to be Australian cuisine. I’ve never actually been to an Outback but I’m sure the food isn’t that authentic or high quality because that is how it goes here with chain restaurants 🙂

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      5. I haven’t either. I’d be surprised if its actually in Australia myself. With that said, I’m shocked, absolutely shocked, that you don’t eat a bloomin’ onion every day for dinner! 😉

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