Carthaginian War Elephants

Another test piece for my new Punic War project. Eventually I'll be buying a more of these but I just had to paint a couple of War Elephants now, if only to pique the interest of my daughter! These were really fun to paint and I'm really rather chuffed with how they turned out. I ran out of Bronze paint so I improvised by blending some brown and yellow into silver until I reached a colour I liked. 

I think I have settled on a basing style for these miniatures that gives an interesting appearance while remaining fairly simple to do. I glue sand to the base and when dry paint it with Vallejo English Uniform, I then dry-brush with Green Ochre and edge the base with Luftwaffe Camo Green. Then I add a fairly light coloured short strand flock to approximately 80% of the base with a couple of dark patches added using tiny clumps of dark green railway Turf. The flock and turf are pressed down to produce a very short grass effect which I think looks better against 6mm figures. Then I add just one or two small stones to add a little more interest. Of course I'm still open to suggestions for improvements so if you have an idea please leave a comment and I'll give it a try out.