Thanks for all the kind comments. I'm now working on painting up the bases of the trees:
Before and after shot. The base has been given a rough dry brush over the original brown; shell hole painted in Vallejo Flat Earth, then some black wash applied to add depth, finished off with a coat of brown ink, then finally a coat of yacht varnish.
It's not exactly modelling masterclass but it does look effective en masse.
I also added a few splashes of black wash to the tree and the base to add a bit of variety.
To take a break from the trees, I had a go at some of the vacformed pieces I bought at Salute. The fortifications in the Bois des Caures were not continuous trench lines, but a network of mutually supporting dugouts and bunkers, so thes eneed doing for the weekend's game anyway. I wasn't happy with my (rather rushed) paintjob on the Amera bunker that featured in one of Scrivs' battle reports and spent a bit of time trying to get a better finish. The vacform is cheap, but by its very nature, very smooth, which means you need to put a bit of work into adding texture or painting it on. I sponged on a couple of highlighting layers and am happier with the result, as well as lining the edge with some black.
Where I am really struggling here is with the lack of foliage I have committed myself to using - in a usual basing job I'd be adding all kinds of tufts and bushes which add another dimension to the texture. I may visit Arcane Models tomorrow and see if they have any brown flock and tufts I can add to make myself happier with this.
I do need to remember that these will be appearing under a dusting of snow at the weekend too!
I also had a crack at improving a hill emplacement, again another bargain from Amera. Like the bunker, I added texture to the groundwork using filler and sand, and raised the level of the emplacement to allow my Hotchkiss team to be able to fire out, before painting. The sandbags had come out very flat in my initial paint and wash, so I decided to paint them in using layers. They're slightly cartoony but certainly have more definition now. Like the bunker, this is waiting for a final layer of flock/weathering/tufts, whatever comes to mind before Sunday!
Coming next will be some other vacformed bits & pieces from Salute; all these I have only textured and undercoated so far.
New from Kallistra, the largest piece in their 'non-hex crater set'. This is a monster!
Amera's craters:
And a dugout from Early War Miniatures. This is a thinner plastic than either Amera or Kallistra so it does have more surface detail - the wickerwork seems very appropriate for trenches of this period.
Finally, one more from Amera:
12 May 2015, 06:57:14 AM