Props A throne fit for a forest king

So I have Skelfthyrnir, a big purple deer skull-headed fellow who, in my setting, is a forest god and lord of the Hartwood. Because of this, I've been thinking about giving him a throne since I started building him. The hard part has been finding something right. I looked at grapevine and bent willow chairs, with thoughts of modifying them with floral bits to make them look more woodsy, but all of them seemed too short for his legs. I found a neat little chair at Michaels, but it's too classically chair and wouldn't look right as a base.

So I started thinking in terms of making use of stuff I already had on hand to make a more customized chair. Enter: foamboard and an empty kleenex box.

supplies by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr
Upon these dead trees we shall build our...other dead tree.

I googled 'forest king throne' and used the results as inspiration, and started drawing out the outline of a broken, dead tree to serve as the throne's back. I wanted something that would look impressive behind Skelf's rack and give me a good place to attach some floral-sized faux antlers I was sent.

outline by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr
Was the look of the Iron Throne rising behind up everybody also an influence? ...yeah.

The next step: assembling it into something vaguely chair-shaped. I used dolls to figure out the rough height for the backing against the kleenex box, finding the box itself provided a base of a nice height without any modifications to it. I did stick a support beam inside it, though. More foamboard got glued on, both to try and strengthen the seat and to make the front look less perfect.

base by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

Time to make it something vaguely approximating a tree. I used white glue and paper towels to layer over part of the front, to cover up the big gaps and make a better surface for adding paint and faux plants. The back, meanwhile, got a mixture of model magic and hot glue layered on, to try and get the look of bark. The lowest areas were left blank, because I want to add plants/roots to make a more natural base, and I'm thinking about sticking lights with a battery pack on (thus the holes punched up top.)

seat by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

backglue by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

I gave it about a day to let the model magic dry and to let the whole thing stop reeking of white glue, then hit it with a coat of gesso. This initial coat does a nice job of showing how the painting and plants should disguise materials use and make it look like old bark.

gesso by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

Today's work was a second coat of gesso, which is now drying. Next up will be applying paint.

 

Thank you all for the feedback/responses! It's fun to see the reactions and interest in how this pile of paper and glue turns out. Today I threw on the first couple layers of proper paint all over the gesso, using blends of grey, brown, and white. Current status: messy, firmly in the 'my god, what I done?' stage of crafting. I know I'm going to want the interior lighter and the outside darker, so now it's a matter of playing with paints until I get the right look. Tomorrow I think I'll be working on darkening up the outside again. The interior will need more grey, I think. Maybe throw some yellow in, too. I think the moss and plants will also go a long way to making the whole thing look like a proper dead tree.

back by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

front by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

 

Thank you! I'm having a fun time with prop building. I've got more ideas, it's just also spacing them out with the dollhouse-scale stuff I want to do for the Calico Critters I've picked up. All the set-building.

Time for new updates! I went ahead and mixed up a black-brown wash and applied it heavily to the whole thing. It helped make the whole thing look a lot more naturally weathered and I think it worked especially nicely on the interior wood.

stainfrot by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

stainback by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

Today's work was trying to lighten things back up, because the washes darkened it up so much that it sort of lost the log look. So there was lots of brushing on of browns and grey-browns, and then finally, starting to apply the greenery. I picked up this vine after Christmas and I think it's at a really good scale for this project. For the other greenery, I've applied a wash to darken and dirty up the plastic plants that came in the same pack as the vines, but I'll likely be getting at least one or two other bits to mix in there. The hard part is finding it in a scale that I feel would look good against the throne.

vine1 by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr

vine2 by Cryptic Cryptid, on Flickr