The dictionary defines decay as…#

The April painting theme being “Bloom and Decay,” or bloom or decay, or bloom and decay and there and back again, I opted to incorporate both decay and bloom in this Blood Bowl Treeman - both the slow decay of a dying tree, the blooming of new flowers on the base, and the cycle of death and regrowth through the changing of the leaves. (That’s three “boths” but stick with me here.)

For the trunk I wanted to lean into the decay - old, dark, dead wood. It’s different than my normal wooden-things recipe, and a combination of a couple things I found from a Citadel Warhammer How To Paint Miniatures guide and some Paintpad.app recipes. I also wanted to keep it dark in order for the leaves and flowers to pop more. I didn’t want everything to get lost in the mid-tone shuffle.

I practiced some “dead wood” (2004) paint schemes on some extra Age of Sigmar terrain I had on hand. Tried out 3 or 4 different processes before landing on a winner.

Speaking of leaves, do you ever stop and channel Avril Lavigne’s 2007 hit Girlfriend and think to yourself “what the hell were you thinking?” Present me felt that way about past me the whole time I was picking out individual leaves to hit with autumnal colors - past me thought, “wouldn’t it be fun if every leave was a different color?” And present me thought that was a terrible idea but couldn’t do anything about it because his/my/our back was too sore from shrimping over the model to find each individual leaf.

At some point with painting and highlighting the leaves, I feel like I started to just do pointillism. It’s all so small the eye blends it together unless you have it up in your face.

I did get to revert to one of my favorite painting techniques: washes. Not a lot of washes on the Ambot, but I could slather everything on the tree with a wash. It was part of the trunk process (and part of my standard Blood Bowl basing process) but for the leaves I did something a little different. I still wanted a wash in order to give the leaves a little definition (and a touch of early-autumn brown color change (and tie it all together like a good rug)) but I didn’t want to overpower alll the colors I painstakingly picked out. I ended up watering down AP Flesh Tone (pre-Fanatics line) to give it a little brown/red. I don’t normally water down a wash (adding water to water!) so that was something new to experiment with.

I opted to freehand the player number on the shields/crests for two reasons: I said I needed to work on my freehand, so here’s some more freehand practice. Also because the Wood Elf team trasnfer sheet doesn’t cross its sevens, which is objectively the cooler way to write a seven.

While the aspects of the tree trunk and flowers are pretty straightforward (dead, not dead), I did specifically want to still include green, healthy leaves in the tree. Decay isn’t an instant process - it happens slowly, when you aren’t looking for it. So while some of the leaves are yellow, red, orange, or even just this side of brown-and-crispy dead, there’s still healthy leaves, fighting the good fight. Perhaps a condemnation of denial - “it can’t be all bad if there’s still new growth.” An aging Blood Bowl player, past their prime, refusing to retire.

From a model building point of view, I did opt to forgo the bird at the top of the tree - I felt it was a little more out of character for what I was going for, and the skulls in the tree fit better. More decay, after all (and also growth around the skulls; they’re not just on the tree, they’re part of the tree).

The yellow and orange of the crests is the planned paint scheme for my Wood Elves, whenever I get around to finally painting them. I can’t start on them yet though, I still need to finish my Skablins or I never will. I did have to repaint the crests at one point, because I had the colors backwards on the back. Gotta follow ROY G BIV, and I had the OY backwards because I tried to paint them both from the same point of view when they should be seen from different points of view. Physics. I never took that class in high school.

The purple in the shoe was specifically to pop some color against the rest of the paint scheme. I don’t have a purple Blood Bowl team and I don’t really plan on it for any of my future teams (Brets and TKs). Speaking of washes, I wanted to give the shoe a bit of definition and grime, but without going as hard in the paint as I do with my Skablins using Agrax over Ulthuan so first trying the above Flesh Tone wash, I realized it was too North Carolina Dirt red/orange. Not the look I’m going for, for an aged shoe in a tree. So instead I took what I immediately learned from watering down Flesh Tone and watered down Agrax. The result? It’s fine.

Anyway, here it is in action.

And with that, I’ll finally uncross my eyes after edge highlighting every single leaf.

If you want to get ahold of me, you can now reach me at floppyparts@proton.me. Send me whatever you want.