Tutorial - Bases - Sand/Desert temple

Recently I just finished a set of bases that look great in person but I cannot take a good photo of to save my life.

Admire my blurry bases! I bet if they were blurry in real life everyone would buy them...

So what I wanted was a bleached out but warm look on my bases, and have them look like they were part of an area that belonged in the desert in the great temple and ruins left to be worn down by sand and time. My mental image was inspired by my childhood memories of going to egypt and then thinking about how everything I saw would look in thousands of years when it had been abandoned.

You can start every single base, pretty much, the same way. It only really matters two or three steps in, or when you start painting, as to whether you end up with stone bases, sand bases or even jungle bases. If you are short on time but want to have hand made bases for all of your army, the first few stages are very quick even when doing an armies worth. When it comes to painting and adding elements, you can just pull a few aside at a time and paint them up. The rest will store fine until you feel like dipping them in glue and grass.

I guess I should get on with the tutorial bit...

Materials:
Cork sheets
PVA glue
Sand Mix
Paint

Extras (To give your bases extra pizaz, but not necessary for good basing if you're tight on time or money):
Static Grass
Tufts
Mini foliage
Wire
Modelling stuff (Greenstuff, fimo, milliput, etc)

Rip some of your cork off. Tear it up into maneagle chunks roughly the size of your bases. Make sure you don't leave any pieces with a perfectly straight edge as it won't look natural. Save these pieces though, they can come in handy.



What is it? It's chunky... Well what's it got in it? ...Chunks

When you rip your cork you will end up with slanted edges. Take these into account when gluing your pieces down. Have a nice variation between little outcroppings and slopes.



I spent ages trying to take this picture that didn't make me look like I have massive man hands. Thanks for the genetics mum!

  Cover your cork in glue and squidge them onto your bases. Make sure you cover the slot if it has one. I always make sure that the slot is covered by a single cork piece to make pinning a model through it easier.

If you want more interest in your base, tear the cork into smaller pieces and arrange them in different ways before gluing them down. Add layers! I'm sticking with simple one pieces bases for this group.



I like to use precariously balanced glasswear to hold my bases in place

Now put something heavy on top of them and leave the glue to dry. PVA is useless at holding things in place until its dry - then it's great, so make sure you drop something on top even if you think you don't need it. 

To cover the rest of the base just blob down some PVA. Spread it around with a brush. As long as you clean it before it dries a brush you dip in PVA will be fine. Probably shouldn't do it with winsor and newtson's though. 

Once all your bare base is covered drop it into your sand pit. This is the important bit that can make or break the realism of your tiny man bases. You need a mix of sizes - at least three from tiny grains to rocks. In mine I have fine play sand, buff, small talus, medium talus, large talus, coal. Depending on how you've stirred it or shaken it up will affect what mix you get on your base, but its the random variation that makes it look more natural and less synthetic. Read more here.

I forgot to take a photo post sanding - but here's what they look like after the first basecoat. When paintingover cork you need to seal it with something first or it will absorb whatever you put on it. Most people use thinned PVA (1:1 glue:water) but I just gave them a couple of go overs with spray primer.

The pale ones are basecoated with 1:1 graveyard earth:water which is a gorgeous colour, and the red ones are the same but with bestial brown instead. Gives a give red earthy tone.

Here the bases have been completely dry brushed and you can see the wash drying in a dappled pattern

The next few stages are just dry brushing your appropriate colours on. For my theme I used warm creamy colours. I smothered the sandy parts with a variety of gryphonne sepia, devlan mud, mixes of both to give it some shadowing and variation. Once that was dry I drybrushed the tops with menoth white base. The larger 'boulder' type rocks I gave a very heavy drybrush of pale sand by vallejo.  The tops got a wash of ivory by vallejo, 1:1 paint to water. When this was dry the top is given a wash of gryphonne sepia. To get the dappled look and to add more visual interest don't apply the wash evenly. Make sure everything is covered but apply it with a swirling motion.

Time for pretend dry grass! I'm using the games workshop dry/dead grass because it's actually quite nice for small simple sections. Add a blob of glue where you want it - try not to make the bases too busy and choose places it wouldmake sense to have your extra features.

You can apply the grass in a number of ways. Either sprinkle it over, or do what I do.

I pinch the grass tightly between my fingers and poke it into the glue a few times. This helps it stick out in one direction more rather than getting floppy sad grass.

Then turn it upside and tap it on the bottom side of the base. This gets rid of excess and also makes it stand upright. Put aside to dry.

If you aren't keen on having grass on more than a few bases at least have some on hand for ones like this one. You can see at the middle bottom one of the stones was loose so I pulled it off. Otherwise it would've come off randomly in play or transport. Just blob some glue in there, add grass, and it's fixed in ten seconds.

Here's the finished lot! It took me a couple of hours to do, including all drying time except for priming (which I always leave overnight.) All I have to do now is give the rims a coat of graveyard earth!

Make sure your rim colour matches your bases - don't just go for black. On ones like these you must go for a lighter colour or it destroys the composition completely and makes the bases look awful.

I hope this comes in handy - happy base making!

Tutorial - Making fresh snow bases

This is a tutorial on how I made these bases

Materials are simple;

Cork Bases
PVA glue
White acrylic paint
Bicarbonate of soda

To make the cork bases you just need cork and a plastic base, you can see more detail on how I make mine here.

The first step was simple - drybrushing in the colours of my choice. I went from a base of two coats fenris grey 1:1 water, up to skull white through shadow grey and space wolves grey. The last drybrush was a very sparse one around the very edges.

Originally I'd planned to have quite a bit of the base showing through the snow, and so spent quite awhile painting them. However they ended up mostly covered. Plan how you want them to show through the snow before you end up spending ages on something that will be hidden.

If you want them completely covered just leave the cork bare - I have a set I'll be finishing tomorrow that I did not paint the cork with anything at all.

Then I made my snow! This is pretty much done by eye. The way it sits in your mixing container is how it will sit on your base, so it'll be easy to see if you're mixture is too runny.

Splurge in some pva and paint first, then bircarbonate. I added too much bicarbonate and thinned it with a water: glue mix. This is what my gloop looked like before I started adding it to my based. The more glue/paint/water there is the smoother and newer the snow will be. The more bicarbonate you add the more of a churned, trodden, used look you can give the snow.

This was enough to do well over 15 bases

I used one of my sculpting tools to apply the snow. I apply it in small blobs at a time working from the bare based up. Just scrape it on then gently push it to where you want with the end of the tool. Depending on how thick your snow is it will 'settle' down to a degree. This make it easy to get a smooth coverage. If you dont want a smooth even coverage either wait for it to dry a bit then poke it around, or add a bit more pva glue before you throw it on. It will hold bigger shapes better that way.

Add more snow everywhere else it would pile up

 When it comes to the rough slopes that would be completely covered it is actually possible to drybrush the snow mixture on. Just stamp an old brush into the snow and brush it gently over the ridges. Wash it off before it dries!

To get the powdery finish of new snow drop the base into the bicarbonate and shake it gently. If you want the snow to be flat you can press it down but if you have shaped it slightly you only need to let it touch lightly.

For a more frosty ice finish sprinkle the top layer with scenic snow.

Enjoy the snowy bases!

Tutorial - Basing using Bark - Snow

There are many reasons to use bits of wood and bark on your bases. It's free - I just pick my bark from branches that have come of trees, twigs that have fallen down. The pieces of bark have a lot of character to them; interesting shapes, amazing texture. You can use bark to make stone bases, wood bases, cracked earth bases. And it's very easy and quick to use.

For the most simple of bases all you need is the base itself, some pva glue, and some bits of dead tree!

Don't forget to check both sides of the bark. For this piece I actually preferred the bottom texture of the bark (on the right)

Just put a blog of glue down where you want to have your bark and drop it on. If you want the bark to be slightly raised just drop it gently on. The bark is so light that the pva glue will hold it up while it dries solid. Otherwise squish it down so it's flat against the base.

For pieces of wood taken off of twigs it's better to apply the glue down the edges rather than on the base, because of the curve.

One of the other benefits of using bark is it's very easy to trim to size and shape. But, when the base is finished it will be very strong and withstand lots of handling.

So here's my set of bases as they are at the moment! When they are dry I will go onto basecoating and what to do with the bits of the base you can still see!

When the glue was dry it's time to basecoat! I wanted to do a snow themed base so I started used Charadon Granite thinned 1:2 paint to water. Just slopped it all over and made sure it filled in all the little crevices in the bark. When that was dry I gave it a thick wash of badab black.

Basecoated left, washed right.

I left that to dry while I ran round doing something else. It's going to take a while before you can paint on it next because the wash layer should be nice and dense. Don't get impatient like I do and start trying to drybrush too early. If your wash is still even a little wet you'll just smoosh paint everywhere. Don't worry if the excess wash makes things dry shiney, either. That will be covered.  I used GW paints for this but you can use any range you like, just use greys with a tinge of blue if you want a cold type base like I do.

Shadow Grey

1:1 Shadow Grey: Space Wolves Grey



1:2 Shadow Grey: Space Wolves Grey
1:1 Space Wolves Grey: Skull White
Skull White

 Just plop your paint in the same place each time - don't mix everything up seperately. Wastes paint and time!

Good old PVA glue blobs then a sprinkle of my tiny snow flakes. If you want to build up a drift off snow all you need to do is make your layer of pva glue bigger. Once coated with the snow flakes it will look like a normal drift, rather than trying to layer the fine snow.

I started by snowing all round what was snowing of the base, then once that was all dry adding snow selectively to parts of the upper layers.

Tiny sprig of plain lichen to add a bit of character

Let your glue fully dry before you shakes off excess snow. It will look better this way and waste less.

Update! After a day my bases ended up looking fairly different. As the glue dried it turned out that the snow wasn't opaque enough to maintain the crisp white colour. It turns out more like very frosted snow, where it has been too cold or sparse to turn into a proper drift. The bases still look good - just very different from the above picture. I will upload one tomorrow of how it looks now (maybe...)

This is easily rectified by adding in some white paint or ink (I prefer ink) to your glue, or if you find some of it dries and looks like snowy than you want, simply brush some over what you've already got and add another light dusting of snow.

There is a way to make your own snow that I will be trying out this week and doing a post on. A tutorial to if it works!

You can use your imagination to refine this process to jungle bases, wood bases, wasteland bases and all sorts. If you want to see more of how I did them however, click one of the following links.

Updates!

So I've been a bit useless with my free time lately and haven't been updated the blog as fast as I should or could. To try and help spur me on a bit in the following days I have put up a set of placeholds pages for the things I do intend to be adding. Getting the ball rolling and all that.

I've given up painting my sisters for a while and been doing some orks instead. They are really fun to paint and definitely on their way to looking good. I did two test orks then pulled out a group of five to paint up altogether. All basecoated and drying from their first wash so far. I wanted to carry on painting but forced myself not to so I don't burn out again! There are no good photos from today unfortunately. Should get definitely get back on top of that and start taking good photos again.

I need to find an ink that will produce a devlan mud coloured wash so I can make my own batches up. I'm using it up in no time and don't want to keep forking out for it from games workshop when I could make it so much cheaper. Very tempted to pick up one of the packs of inks from hobbycraft, Dayler and Rowney or Winsor and Newton. It would last ages but I've spent so much money... Must hold back for now. Get a few sets of models and techniques under my belt before I start doing everything under the sun!

Will defo post a quick tutorial on how I did my orks when I've got it down pat. I really like how their skin looks, and the trousers. Just working out how to get their leather looking all snazzy now.

Goodnight, fair readers!

Boredom and sleepiness breeds... tutorials?

I've been completely exhausted and falling asleep today so in no fit state the paint anything. Instead I've started putting together tutorials for the site :)

They'll be going up as unfinished posts. I just wanna put up what I've got at the moment so that I can see what everything looks like and watch it come together on the blog. Also I'm impatient. All the posts will be linked to in the tutorial section when I redo that properly and neaten everything up.

I'm still trying to work out how everything should actually be organised and formatted. I'm going to build a litte white box tomorrow to take crisper photos in. Photos that you can actually identify the object in...