Barking up trees

This weekend I had originally planned to make some more progress on the Warhammer Quest display unit for the glass cabinet. However, I had neglected to calculate for the various celebrations (an anniversary and two milestone birthdays) within our family... Which my loving wife dutifully reminded me of, as I was pulling out all the hobby gear.

So the progress hasn't proceeded as progressively as planned. :-(

I did get the trees for the display covered in bark-like texture. (Hence the title of this post.) I painted the wire skeleton with several layers of wall-filler made slightly thinner and goopier with the aid of PVA glue. I brushed on an initial layer of watered down filler, to act as a "primer coat" for the following layers to grab on to. Then I added several layers of a thicker mix until the wire frame wasn't protruding from the surface anymore. For the final layer I threw a handful of sand into the mixture, to give it some more texture. I put this on roughly and with visible brushstrokes to emulate the texture of bark. Once dried it is a bit more subtle than I'd hoped, but when painted it should suffice:

As I had several tree wireframes still lying around, I've textured them at the same time, as you can see above.
Here is a close up of the two trees (and separate branches) for the display, so you can see a bit of the texture I achieved:

As a bonus, while these were drying between layers, I managed to clip and clean 18 GW the Hobbit Goblins. I'll be using these as some sort of underground degenerates, and they can double as mutants for games of 40K or =I=Munda, so they'll be based somewhat generically. I also managed to greenstuff the torsos of 11 second-hand Battle for Skull Pass spiders, so they are ready for primer. Additionally (filler is applied quickly, but dries slowly) I filled the gaps in the Heresy Miniatures Lurkers I showed a while ago and attached them to their bases.

All in all, looking back, while I didn't do what I planned to, I've been quite productive. And all that in a weekend I, beforehand, considered lost to sitting up and playing nice with relatives...