Maestro at work

Yesterday our local wargaming/cardgaming convention took place, and of course I was there to help out, mingle, and in general have a great time. A good friend of mine who is an incredible painter/modeller was also there with his WHFB display, and while we sat there he made a very nice base for his Nurgle Daemon Prince.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves :)

I'm looking forward to see his paintjob on the model :)

Basing tip or how not to destroy too many drill bits

One of the issue I face with the bases i make using ballast and sand is that once my models are ready, and need to be joined with the base, I have to drill through sand and ballast to make holes for the brass pins I have attached to model legs.

The problem with this is that drilling through sand and rock is the best way to destroy those nice 1mm or 1.5mm drill bits.

There is a very simple solution for this problem though :)

Make little mounds of Milliput around where the feet of the model will connect with the base, press the mini on them to make light impressions, and let milliput dry before adding ballast and sand to the base.

The reason for using milliput is that it cures rock hard, and is a lot easier to drill through than green stuff.

When making impressions in milliput, make sure that either milliput or model feet are lubricated so they dont stick. I use petroleum jelly (Vaseline), but you can use anything that works for you as long as you are sure it can be easily washed off.

Forest rock base tutorial

Here is a step-by-step for my latest base that was created for Baldur the Stonecleaver

The base was sculpted from standard grade milliput. All texture was made with crumpled-up aluminum foil.

While milliput was still soft I pinned Baldur's feet, and inserted him into the base to mark his footing.

Once milliput was rock hard (I just gave it 24 hours) it was primed with black gesso

The gesso is not dry yet in this photos, so it looks pretty glossy :)

While gesso was drying, i mixed up four different shades of grey. Colors used were chaos black and codex grey (or lamp black and slate grey, or how ever you want to call them) in ratios 4:1 2:1 1:1 and 1:2

These shades were progressively drybrushed on the milliput rock

I gave the rock some time to dry, and mixed up some more paints, first one is pure slate grey, and then slate grey:titanium white (or codex grey/skull white) in ratios 2:1 1:1 and 1:2

All the new shades were progressively drubrushed as well (in the end i didnt use the lightest color)

The next step was ti give the whole rock a liberal wash of light sepia (ogryn flesh equivalent). I just used a home-made wash. Main reason for light sepia wash is that no real rock is monochrome and it just makes it look a lot better.

Last step was a drybrush of very pale brown color (or bleached bone)

Final touches were done with a mixture of green and yellow ink, Army Painter poison ivy, and Army Painter swamp tuft. The ink was used to accent grassy areas. The base was painted in calthan brown (like all the bases i have for this army) and the front arc was accented in glorious gold (vallejo one)

And here is the big man himself standing on his base

And for the very end here is the recipe for the home-made-wash I use. This recipe is floating around the interwebs, and I dont take any credit for it.

1. Mix distilled water and liquitex flow release in 10:1 ratio
2. Mix the previous concoction with liquitex mate medium in 1:1 ratio
3. Add waterproof acrylic ink to your liking. For 10ml of the mix I like to add 50 drops of ink.

To make stronger color, accent it with black ink (browns and reds only since it looks ugly with blues and greens)

If you liked this tutorial feel free to leave a comment :)

Special base for a special mini

Today I did some assembly and decided that Baldur needs to get a special base, him being the stonecleaver and all, so here is what came out

It will resemble a rock when painted, I promise :)

The base is made from milliput, and it was textured using crumpled up aluminum foil.

Natural textured bases pt.5

The bases are all done :)

The only thing that needs work are the base borders which now have residue of brown paint and envirotex. They will be done once the models are painted and properly positioned on the base (no point doing it now since i have to paint the facing makers in any case)

I'm happy with how they turned out :)

Natural textured bases pt.4

After the painting part its time to fit the figures to their bases. In some cases the mini will stand on the base without any problems, and in other cases I needed to use green stuff to make the pose look more natural. After the green stuff hardens it will be painted, and masked off with static grass. The stream/pond beds are also painted green (in this case Dark Angels Green from GW)















Taking photos of each base with its model is a nice reference for the future. No need to go guessing which figure goes to which base :)


And once the paint was dry and the green stuff was mostly cured, it was time to add the water to my streams and puddles.

I used Envirotex Lite, mixed as instructed in 1:1 ratio, covered the whole work area with a nylon bag, and started carefuly pouring the mix. If some of the mix gets on the lip of the base its fine. it can always be painted over :)