Introduction

After making a hard decision not to buy anymore miniatures, until my backlog was reduced to "NIL", I looked through what seemed to be an "Endless" amount of figures and decided to do a scene with Gollum!

At a local Model Shop in Newcastle, I discovered a range of "Pre-Made" Terrain made by "Javis". After purchasing a small piece of pre-made terrain, I deceided to represent the scene where Gollum ambushes Frodo and Sam.

Step 1

Although the terrain pieces available from Javis look relatively good on their own, my personal feelings are that they tend to be heavily bombarded with Static grass.

The first step was to remove the untidy parts of static grass that covered the terrain piece.

Next I quickly brushed the piece to remove all loose particles and debris.

Step 2

The next step was to decide how to attach Gollum. For those of you that have the Gollum miniature, you will be aware that the figure is perched on top of a rock and is one solid piece.

My first thought was to cut away the rock, but quickly decided against it and decided to attach the entire figure to the existing outcrop of rocks within the terrain piece. Using standard Milliput, I prepared a small amount. For those of you unfamiliar with Milliput, it is a 2 part Epoxy Putty, which when blended together and left to cure, hardens to a stone like status. Below is a step by step picture guide on how to blend Milliput.

Using the ball of Milliput, it was firmly pressed between two rocks on the terrain piece.

Taking the Gollum figure, this was then firmly pressed into the freshly prepared Milliput.

Using a modelling tool, the Milliput was crafted in the fashion of the terrain piece to blend the two pieces together.

Step 3

At the beginning, I had already decided that the terrain piece was way too bland! I decided to add more detailed terrain to it. I decided to have a path running through the two sets of outcroppings and therefore PVA was applied to the terrain piece.

Whilst the PVA was wet, sand was applied in a large quantity and then firmly pressed down before the excess was removed.

The whole thing was left to dry overnight.

Once the path was dry, the entire surface was coated with slightly watered down Scorched Brown. Whilst this was drying, Gollum, the sculpted rock and the rock outcroppings were coated with Chaos Black.

After everything had dried, the rock outcroppings and Gollums rock were dry-brushed with Codex grey. After this had dried it was dry-brushed again with Fortress Grey.

Whilst this was drying, the path was dry-brushed with Beastial Brown.

And then lastly, the path was dry-brushed with Bleached Bone.

Step 4

From this point on, I forgot to take photo's, so humble apologies to all.

PVA was added to the front of the terrain piece and gravel was heavily sprinkled and pressed firmly into place. Whilst this was drying, I added foliage using Woodland Scenics Tree Kits and Long Grass.

The gravel was then base-coated with Chaos Black and then dry-brushed firstly with Codex Grey and finally with Fortress Grey.

Step 5

All that remained was to paint the miniatures and secure them to the diorama.

I won't go into detail on how I painted the figures, but just one useful point to anyone who hasn't painted Gollum yet....don't use Black as a basecoat, don't use white as a basecoat...use PINK! Look at the results and I'll let you all be the judges!

Conclusion

Anyway, here's some shots of the finished scene....

Well, that's about it....hope you enjoyed it....onward to a bigger project now ;)