Would that I wood

Ok, this is a project that occupied much more of my time than I had planned.  My forest base.  Wire made trees, with clump foilage and pan scourer greenery.

The trunks were made with twisted wire (tutorials online), and then I added the foilage.  As I had trouble with this before, this time I added cut up pan scourer, and then clump foilage over that.  I have to say, I like the bushier effect that this gives.

As for the trunk textures, I tried green stuff, liquid greenstuff, and wrapping with glue soaked paper towel.  I think that in future, I will stick with the glue soaked paper towel.  Most fiddly, but I like the effect the best.

Thorakitai

Ok, so I FINALLY finished the thorakitai from the Steel Phalanx set for my Aleph.  They were, a slog.  I was never very inspired by the models, and they had sat, mostly unpainted for months.  Finally kicked myself into finishing them, since I have been using two of them in my lists for a long time, and am trying (Hard) to play with painted models.  So they are done.
I am not desperately happy with their paint job, and I know that these are terrible pictures, but really, they don't inspire much more from me at the moment.

Any comments are as usual welcome.