Elven Ruins

I've done quite some ruins for Frostgrave, some with foam, some with Stewalin-stones. Now, while a frozen city is one thing, to my imagination, elven ruins should have something unique.

When thinking about the elves of Middle Earth, two things come to my mind: elegance and sadness. To work these into a piece of terrain seems hard, though.

So, I started with the 'basic' ruin, cut from foam.

I used a toothed corner in this project (which is rather easy to do with a hotwire cutter). Cutting the doorways and their frames, I used a ballpen to carve the individual stones into the walls. I also cut and carved narrow windows. With a crumpled piece of tinfoil, I pressed some texture into the foam.

Glueing the frames over the doorways and finishing carving all the stones (on both sides!), I got the thing ready for a first fit.

The whole thing will be built on a MDF base. I also cut some stones from foam to place inside the ruined building.

Now I did the first layer of paint. As I wanted the ruin to be of an almost white stone, I began with a terracotta tone.

After a brushing with beige, I finally assemled the ruin on the base.

A brown wash to give it deeper texture.

Finally drybrushing with beige and white and glueing gravel besides the bigger stones for piles of rubble. Fine sand was glued onto the rest of the base and some piece of the old floor was done with cardboard in one corner.

Now, what to do about the look of sadness and passing time? A tree that has sprung up inside the ruined building gives a good impression of how long it has been abandoned.
So I built a tree - you can find the tutorial to this method also here.

The tree grows on the rubble (and is removable for gaming).

Some coarse flock to form some vines and moss for small bushes after a wash of brown mixed with green on the base.

Placed on the table with some trees, it looks really good. For a size comparison, here's Glorfindel.

Combining the FIMO-tree with the ruin has proven to work really fine, because with a fitting wire aperture, the tree stands firm without need for glue. If it gets in the way, it can just be removed and replaced later.