Hobbit Hole

 

My first finish of 2022 is a Hobbit Hole for my Shire-folk to live in. I received the Forge World kit as a Christmas present and have used the Christmas / New Year holiday to get it all put together, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

I made the hill from 3 layers of  cheap expanded polystyrene, cut to shape with a stanley knife and fastened together with a hot glue gun. The base was then cut to size from foamboard and the edges were chamfered with a knife. To make the piece more hardwearing I covered all exposed surfaces with polyfiller then gave it a day to dry.

Next up was texturing the terrain - the path is made from greenstuff, and I used a roller from GreenStuffWorld to give it a cobblestone texture. The fence is made out of balsa wood and held together with hot glue - this was fiddly and took a lot longer than anticipated so I would try and find a better way to do this in the future.

To add a bit more texture to everything I covered the hill and base level in PVA glue and scattered a mix of modelling grit and other cork bits for texture. After that had dried for a few hours I brushed a layer of watered down PVA over the top to secure it in place.

I painted all the terrain with a mix of black & brown craft acrylic and then dry brushed it with a 'early gray' wall paint - it looks very stark here, but this is just to provide a base from the grass and it will be much more subtle when it's buried in flock!. I primed the hobbit hole with some brush on primer, then painted in Mechanicus Standard Grey.

I originally attempted to follow the painting guide in the Scouring of the Shire supplement for the hobbit hole pieces, which suggests dry brushing up from Mechanicus Grey to Administratum Grey and then using washes to colour the different areas (wood, tile etc), but the results were horribly washed out so I scrapped that plan and started over (I should have taken a picture, but was rather irritated with it at this point, so did not!). I ended up repainting the whole thing the normal way with the colours listed below and it came out much better the second time around.

Finally, to finish everything off I applied a liberal selection of grass tufts, lichen and flowers to make the garden at the front and to add a few bits of height to the hill. Once those were fixed in place I brushed glue over the rest of the exposed hillside and scattered a mix of various flocks over a bed of PVA with a few clumps of static grass for variety. Some of the lichen wasn't too keen to stick so I used a bit of super glue to keep it in place.

Tomorrow, after everything has dried, I will seal it all in place with a solution of water and PVA applied from a small spray bottle.

Painting Summary

Wood

• Base Dryad Bark
• Drybrush Baneblade Brown (light)
• Wash Agrax Earthsade

Bricks:

• Base 50/50 XV-88 & Dryad Bark
• Wash Agrax Earthshade
• Drybrush Baneblade Brown

Tiles:

• Base Mournfang Brown
• Highlight by adding varying amounts of Skrag Brown & Doombull Brown (for variation on tiles)
• Wash Agrax Earthshade

Wall:

• Base Baneblade Brown
• Wash: Agrax Earthshade

Windows:

• Base: Dark Reaper
• Wash: Nuln Oil Gloss
• Frames: Krieg Khaki

Door

• Base Castellan Green
• Drybrush Loren Forest Green (heavy)
• Drybrush Elysian Green (light)
• Wash Coelia Greenshade
• Drybrush Elysian Green (light)

The flock, flowers and lichen were all things I already had - there are about 5 different blends of flock, 3 lichens, and about 10 different flowers / clump foliage. Most came from Woodland Scenics, Warpainter.net and Serious-play.co.uk