Feathers

Not something for every army, but with the recent addition of a few Hordes pieces, we are starting to see a slight tribal theme here and there, and with these, you could easily establish a very personalized feel to your army. For these, you will need Greenstuff, X-acto knife, some wax paper and some very thin wire. The wire really does need to be pretty thin and thinner the better. Personally I grabbed the thinnest piano wire I could find at my local hobby store.

Start off by getting a small piece of wax paper with a very light coat of cooking oil on it as a working surface, you'll likely want to have a cutting mat or something similar underneath as we use the X-acto to carve a little. Again mixing up some Greenstuff and take a pretty small blob and mash it onto the end of your wire.

While flattening it down onto the wax paper, try to keep a more elongated shape as your doing this. Once down, get right to flattening out the shape with a shaping tool. Try to get a slightly raised center while doing this also, as this will give the look of the feather's shaft.

Then, start to shape the outside edge of your feather with an X-acto by cutting away any excess.

With blade still in hand, start cutting into the vein of the feather to produce that all too known feather texture.

After you have gotten your feather to a place your happy with, let it sit over night, remove it from the wax paper by gently pulling it up by the wire. At this point, if you are placing the feather in a spot where the back side cannot be seen, you honestly don't have to do any more, but if it will be in a place where both sides are viewed, you'll want to skim the back of your feather with Greenstuff and sculpt out the other side, just like we did on the front.

Once you're happy with it, you can glue it down, prime and paint them up till your hearts desire. This piece again is one you can do in a batches and keep them on hand when the need arises.

Flags

Something that seems to intimidate many people just because of its size and delicate nature, flags can be pretty simple to make with Greenstuff and for the amount of work, make for a very impressive bit of conversion work. You'll need your trusty Greenstuff, a piece or wire for the flag pole, wax paper, some light cooking oil, an X-acto, cutting edge, a hard surfaced rolling device and a few shaping tools.

I start off with a fairly thick piece of piano wire for the pole. Cut it to length knowing fully where its going to be placed on a given sculpt. Then with a small marble sized blob of Greenstuff, I flatten it out on wax paper, with a little bit of oil on it, just like I did with the bed roll, at around 1/16 of an inch thick. Once thats rolled flat, let it set for about 20-25 minutes to cure. This is a little more cure time than the bed roll, as I need this piece to be a bit more firm, since it will be larger and thinner, and want to reduce the "droop" factor that might occur with this piece.

Then cut out the basic shape with a large flat cutting surface, Again, it may take a try or two to get this down, as it may start to pull on the soft Greenstuff. The oil that is still on the Greenstuff will help with finger prints, but if you're having troubles with this some latex gloves might help out.

Then, start cutting some slots into the one side of your flag. This will create the tab like pieces that we can wrap around your soon to be banner pole. More of a mashing cut may be better in this area, as its really easy to start distorting the tabs with a pulling cut.

Once you have a few even slots cut, line up your pole with the flag and start to fold them over with an X-acto blade. Try to only touch the very ends of the flaps with your blade and not mess up the smooth surface of the tabs that we have worked hard to keep up to this point.

Once the tabs are wrapped around the pole, take a shaping tool and work the flaps smooth into the flag.  This should be the back of your flag were looking at when working the flaps into the flag, so its not 100% critical to get perfect. But if your going for the showcase look, you can very easily come back after things have fully cured and with a touch of fresh Greenstuff, smooth out the edges, or sand them down with a small piece of fine grit sand paper.

From here, flip over your flag and carefully shape where the flag meets the pole for a more realistic drapery look.

Once we have the basic flag down, and you want to take your flag that extra step for a realistic feel, take some round, flowing shaped devices and start to place a few folds in the flag. Smooth pens, carving tools and a few other devices can accomplish this. I tend to work from the upper corner and create a few simple flowing folds. Be careful not to over do this step, as you can easily start to pull the flag off its pole. Again, I tend to keep it to a few simple folds.

Once you get it to a point your happy, try to lay it down with something under the main folds, as these will tend to droop with gravity, pulling on the Greenstuff.

After your flag has fully cured, you can shape, cut and sand your flag to a slightly more crisp stage. Like sanding the outer edges of the flag, or taking an X-acto to get the inside of the flaps clean cut.

It can take a little practice getting flags to a nice flowing shape while maintaining a crisp look, but with a little practice, you can get some very dynamic and impressive flags.

Until next time.

DD