Joining the Trees to the Base
This was the tricky part. I wanted the trees to convincingly blend into the base, but the one slightly unrealistic aspect of the sagebrush trees is that the trunks don't flair out at the base like most trees.
I glued the trees into the hillside with Liquid Nails. When that was dry, I sculpted the base of the trunk with DAS air-bake clay.
Painting
I used craft paint to paint the base. (Below, Folk Art brand is abbreviated FA and Delta Ceramcoat, DC.)
First, I painted the base of the trunks to blend in with the sagebrush wood with craft paints. I used the following colors:
- DC Territorial Beige
- DC Mudstone
- DC Hippo Grey
- DC Quaker Grey
- FA Yellow Ochre
- FA Wicker White
Next, I painted the hillside. The undercoat is DC Dark Burnt Umber.
The rocks have a basecoat of FA Burnt Sienna, which may seem unusual since the rocks will eventually have a greenish tint - but looks really realistic, in my opinion. I believe I burrowed this idea from paintings I've seen, but I'm not sure.
The dirt areas were built up with drybrushed highlights mixed from FA Burnt Umber to DC Territorial Beige to DC Mudstone. The rocks were given coats of DC Hippo Grey to DC Quaker Grey to FA Wicker White, and all of these had tiny amounts of FA Yellow Ochre mixed in. The Yellow Ochre added to grey yields a greenish hue.
Then I painted the empty spots for the figures and the blank sides of the hill black.
(I should also mention that I did these same steps on the bases of the figures themselves.)