Continuing my irregular series about bases, basing and well general tips I will take you through the process I use to paint the two types of bases I use. I use these for my Grey Knights and Skitarii respectively, however at some point I am going to modify some to combine elements of the two so it doesn't look weird if I field the two armies together in an Apocalypse game. Also you may notice that I use, almost exclusively, the old GW paint colours. Feel free to swap them for their current near match brethren.
So leading Straight on from this post:
At this point you should have your bases cleaned and primed, as per my previous post. From here I am going to walk through the steps I take to paint the two types of bases.
First up the 'Parched Earth' bases:
This method is a fairly fast way to paint these well balanced and very detailed bases. I chose to do them slightly darker tones to balance out the bright steel, white and red colours that dominate the colour scheme of my Grey Knights. To make them more traditional sulphur desert coloured you could perhaps swap the Charadon Granite for Iyanden Darksun and the Devlan Mud for Gryphonne Sepia.
1) Thin down some Charadon Granite so that it is about the same consistency as paint you would airbrush with. Liberally wash this into the cracks in the base. Once this is dry sticky brush the base with 1:2 Reaper Dark Blood:Charadon Granite (Base Mix).
2) Sticky brush the base with 1:2 Deneb Stone:Base Mix.
3) Heavily Drybrush patches with 2:1 Deneb Stone:Charadon Granite. The Idea here is to add natural looking changes to the colour of the ground just like real soil. Final Drybrush highlight in patches with Deneb Stone.
4) Paint any metal junk with Boltgun Metal and pick out any rocks with a Heavy Drybrush of Adeptus Battlegrey.
5) Stipple the metal bits of debris rather heavily with Blazing Orange to simulate rust. Highlight the rocks in streaks with 1:1 Adeptus Battlegrey:Astronomicon Grey and then edge highlight them with pure Astronomicon Grey.
6) Wash the base with 1:1 Devlan Mud:Water wash. The trick here is to put a blob of pure Devlan Mud on the base and then spread it out with water to create more random lighter and darker patches of ground.
7) When the wash is dry paint any crystals with Liche Purple and then highlight with 2:1 Liche Purple:Tentacle Pink (you can make Tentacle Pink by adding Space Wolf Grey to Liche Purple). Make sure to add some crystal light retraction streaks on each facet. Successively highlight this with 1:1 Liche Purple:Tentacle and then pure Tentacle Pink. Thinly glaze the crystals with 1:1 Leviathan Purple:Water to blend the highlights together.
8) Add fine spot highlights to the crystals with pure Skull White. Add a few random Boltgun Metal chips to the debris to simulate newer chipping.
9) Paint the rim of the base Chaos Black, and pin the model in place. Then when dry coat with clear Matt finish if you prefer to do so. Yes, the one at the bottom left is ready to have the miniature pinned on.
10) Lastly pick out the crystals with clear gloss varnish.
'Lost Empires' Bases
This is a fast and relatively good looking method I developed to paint these bases when I realised I had over four hundred Skitarii miniatures to put on bases. Because of the rapid nature of painting these there are a few steps missing photos, sorry for that.
For best results the bases are painted separately from the miniatures as mentioned in this post:
1) Wash the stone blocks and on patches on the gravel with 1:1:4 Asurmen Blue:Reaper Deep Ocean:Water.
2) Drybrush heavily with Deneb Stone.
3) Drybrush with P3 Morrow White.
4) Redefine some wash patches with Step 1 wash mix.
5) Wash gravel bits with 1:1 Devlan Mud:Water mix.
6) Pick out details with Reaper Deep Ocean.
7) Highlight details with Reaper Marine Teal.
8) Wash any black details twice with pure Badab Black.
9) Paint the rim of the base Chaos Black, and pin the model in place.
10) Coat the mini with clear finish and you are done.
So there you have it, an easy way to paint two of the available sets of bases from Dragon Forge.
Until next time
Cheers
Subby out
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