Bases Tutorial: Forest

As shown in the Circle of Orboros commissions, here is how I made the forest bases. Before I started painting the figures, they were based using the basic grit shown here. The bases were painted with the Reaper Master Series Woodstain Brown then left alone until after the figure was painted and sealed!

Remember SEAL Coat the figure first, before continuing on. This will make sure the figure is protected and the base undisturbed until you are done. Dont worry another spray seal coat will be applied when you are all finished with the basing if you wish. On to the tutorial!

Aside from the paints being from Reaper Master Series, the tree stumps are from Woodland Scenics, and everything else is from Secret Weapon Miniatures. 

STEP 1: Preperation

After following the tutorial in the Basic Dirt you will need the following:

An old paintbrush

PVA Glue

Dirt Flock

Secret Weapon Miniatures:

Wet Earth Pigment set

Fallen Leaves

Crushed leaves

Also watching these tutorials on Secret Weapon Miniatures website will help understand the uses of their various products, and a little research never hurt anyone.

STEP 2: Get on With it!

So we have our Figure painted and sealed, base is painted up and ready to go. We will start with applying the Secret Weapon Pigments. Pigments can be tricky at first use. you dont need a lot on your brush. Pigments are ment to be dry and "rubbed in" to cover the area.

We start with Dark Earth Pigment. 

Spread it over the base, covering most of the previously painted basing. Its ok if you get it one you miniature, it will add to the dirty effect (hence why I left it on the bottom of the cloak and feet).

IF you get some pigment where you dont want it, take a small brush with a BIT, tiny bit of water to wash it off. Make sure the water doesnt spread to the other pigment or it will make it wet and blend it into the paint, ruining the effect.

When finished, dont forget to "knock off" the excess by tapping on the underside of the base while it is upside-down. You can also gently blow on the top to remove excess, just do this facing away your paint area so you dont get it everywhere if you blow to hard.

STEP 3: Terracotta Earth

Next we apply Terracotta Earth Pigment, highlighting the previous pigment colors. This raises up the colors, just like using a drybrush.

Again, when finished dont forget to "knock off" the excess by tapping on the underside of the base while it is upside-down. You can also gently blow on the top to remove excess, just do this facing away your paint area so you dont get it everywhere if you blow to hard.

STEP 4: Exhaust Black

Here we drybrush the Exhaust Black Pigment over everything we just did. This helps to shade down the tones more earthly. Extra Exhaust Black was added under the cloak for deeper shading.

One last time, When finished, dont forget to "knock off" the excess by tapping on the underside of the base while it is upside-down. You can also gently blow on the top to remove excess, just do this facing away your paint area so you dont get it everywhere if you blow to hard.

STEP 5: The Dirty

Using PVA glue overtop of pigments is tricky. If spread around it will mix the pigments making them wet and turning into a thick paint, not really what we want. Just a dab here and there where you want the dirt flock to go, depending on how full you want your greens. Leave some space for the fallen and crushed leaves we will be making in the next step.

Add you favorite dirt flock, or grass flock to the PVA glue. Make sure the flock is a bit darker in color from the leaves you choose for color contrast.

Press in the excess, and "knock off" and/or blow the excess away from your work area.

STEP 6: Crush them Down!

Next up we take the Dark Green Leaf Litter from Secret Weapon Miniatures (as sen in the top of the pic) and crush it! Rub it together grind with a piantbrush end, or however you want to. It should look the bottom of the pic below).

Add PVA glue to the areas you want covered by the crushed leaves. Again you can cover the rest of the base, or leave it as open as you want.

STEP 7: Leafing the Base

For the finishing touches, we turn to Secret Weapon MIniatures Fallen Leaves: Fall Mix. This provides a variety of fall colors for the leaves.

Applying the Leaves is a simple step, take some PVA glue (a small dab) and add it to the the bottom of the leaf and press it into place. Do this for each leaf. Make sure you spread them out, leaves dont usually fall in clumps.

STEP 8: Reap your Enjoyment!

There you have it, forest bases all done! Looks pretty and livens up you painted figure.
If your careful with your figures you can go and play some games, or sit them on the shelf. For extra added protection, you can use a dull spray seal coat to make sure that stuff sticks to the bases, but it should hold as is currently. I didnt use one here, just because of paranoia I recently had with a can of spray sealer.

Here are some colors I used on the bases that were not covered in the tutorial, but are on some of the bases. All paints following are Reaper Master Series. Colors separated by a coma are just a drybrush blend starting at the darkest color, highlighting upwards.

Base Grit: Woodstain Brown
Stones: Stone Shadow, Stone Grey, Weathered Stone
Tree Parts: Blackend Brown, Shield Brown, Driftwood Brown.

Bases Tutorial: Basic Dirt

So here we go into my second base tutorial, Basic Dirt. It is a simple one really, but to help those that are new, or people looking for a varied approach from what they are used to.

Lets start with materials needed.

1- a base. any size you need will do. The one pictured is a 30mm round lipped base used in Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux, and other tabletop wargames.

2 - Clear Tape.

3 - PVA Glue. Basic white glue.

4 - Grit or Sand basing materials. They vary in sizes (fine, small, medium, large)

So we have our materials ready to go, lets begin!

STEP 1: Preperation

Here we take our bases and place a strip of tape over the opening holes. This assures that the sand/grit will stick on the whole of the base. The 30mm and 40mm bases will need these. The 50mm and above are completely solid, so no tape is needed.

STEP 2: GLUE UP!

Now that the base slots are covered with tape, just cover the top area in glue. Easy enough step. You usually want to do 5-8 bases at a time this way so the glue doesnt dry up before you get to it.

STEP 3: Ground the Dirt!

I keep all my grit and sand in separate Tupperware containers. This allows room for spreading around the grit/sand without making much of a mess. and depending on the way I want to base each piece there is plenty of room to move around in.

This step is the final one. You just take that base, glue side down into the grit/sand and push it in. Hold down there for about 5 seconds and lift the base out. Holding the base upsidedown still tap on it a few times to knock the loose bits off.

And there you have a basic dirt/sand/grit base ready to paint! See how easy that was?
I have a slew of these at the ready incase I ever need a quick base ready to go for future projects. I wanted to share this one tho because many of my commissions use this base.

Well I think I will post 1 more for today. I am finishing up the Khador pictures so they will be up later this week. Take care.

Bases Tutorial: Desert Sand

 I have talked about it for a while, so here is my tutorial on my custom Desert Sand bases. Although these were made with the round lipped bases for Warmachine, they can be used for any bases really.

These ones were custom done for a Protectorate of Menoth army I was commissioned to do a while ago, and still get some more once in a while. There is the background, lets begin!

STEP 1:: What you Need.

So here are some items you will need.

Green Stuff

Bases

Sand grit

White glue

STEP 2:: Preparing the Bases

 If you have the grove open in your bases you may want to cover that slot up. There are many options to this as seen in the picture above. You can cover the slot with basic tape. You could also clip a toothpick down to size and glue it in the slot. These are the two different methods used above. Really either way works good. Although the tape is a quick way to start getting at the bases, the toothpick provides support if you plan on pinning the model to the base down the middle.

 Green Stuff is a two part epoxy that you mix by hand, combining the yellow and blue until you get a nice green color. Remember a little bit can go a long way. Even more remember that you can always add more green stuff, but if you make too much then you better have a use for the excess.

STEP 3:: Press to Fit

Here is a wide picture of a few bases being worked on at once. Slots are covered up and green stuff is made. Now take the green stuff and press it onto the base and smear it to match up close to the top of the lip. You want to leave gaps to see the base, like in the picture. This will help separate the cracked earth appearance and the rocky earth.

STEP 4:: Making the Earth

It easier than it sounds. Let the green stuff "dry" a bit (30 min-1hr) to where you can drag your exacto blade across without dragging up green stuff. Here you can removed any unwanted excess or re-shape the ground.

STEP 5:: Adding the Grit

Once you have your desired shape, let the green stuff cure a bit longer. Not completely harden or the next part wont work properly. If it doesnt cure enough then the grit will spread into the green stuff ruining the design.

Take your white glue and spread a thin bead upon the "open" parts of the base, that is the black areas you can still see. It is ok to get glue upon the green stuff itself to blend the two bits together.

Then you press the base into you sand grit, or sand mixture. The grit should hold to the glue and put some indentations into the green stuff.  Shake off the excess and reshape your earth cracks. Let completely cure before continuing onto painting.

STEP 6: Painting 

Prime the base with your favorite primer. I use a brush-on primer to knock off any loose grit not held fast by the glue. You can kind of make out the indentations made by pressing the grit onto the base from the earlier step. All of the following colors I have used Reaper Miniatures Master Series.

 Here we painted with Khaki Shadow.

 Drybrush on top of previous layer with Faded Khaki.

 Another drybrush layer on top using Desert Khaki.

This is the highlight level so try to get only the top most parts.

You can see the indents from the grit coming more apparent here.

 And one last drybrush. This is the Extreme highlight, the top most highlight layer.

Drybrush this in scarce random areas. Sparingly, just a bit here and there. 

Color used: Desert Sand.

 All finished! Now just clean up the base (i used Pure Black) and then I marked the front arc of the model. Although you can do what you want at this point, its your miniature.

And there you have it! Desert Sand bases. Could also be dry earth or cracked earth, depending on how you paint them up and how much of the sand grit you apply.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I plan on doing more at some point on the bases and other things. Off to paint again, good luck out there.

Frosted Terror

Hello again readers and browsers! Its been a while, I know. I have been busy lately painting up more of my Cryx army for a tournament happing soon. Out of all the models I own for Warmachine, Cryx is the largest with just about 300 models! Out of them, less than half are fully painted and ready to go. So I set out to paint what I can this past month and I ran into an issue when working on one of the big ones, the Cryx battle engine, the Wraith Engine!

Hence the title, Frosted Terror! It may have happened to you, or it may some day and I am here to help you out. You just finished painting a beautiful miniature, you let the paint dry, and you begin to apply sealer. Whatever type of sealer you use, you notice that upon drying something bad, no terrible, no no, UNSPEAKABLE has happened! The beautiful paint job is now covered over in a frosting grey haze!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

All those hours, all that detail, all that damned frost! What to do, where to turn? Right here friends, I am with you and I will help you through this. First, dont panic. Frosting can occur with many variables, the most common being the weather. Humidity can cause the sealer to set before it is completely dry causing this fog up, or it could be an old bottle/can of sealer, or just a bad batch. Just follows these steps and you will be back to praising the light and the fact that you came across this.

STEP 1: DONT PANIC!

 So its a hugh deal, but easily fixable. After this horrendous finding, breath and say "I can fix this". Dont touch the miniature and set it aside for 24 hrs to allow the sealer to completely set in. usually 12hrs will do, but better safe than sorry.


STEP 2: Cooking up the Miniature.

 Ingredients to use after the miniature has sat for a while. Olive Oil and water. Thats it. You dont even need that much of the olive oil either, Just a dab. Wash the entire miniature with Olive Oil, just like you are adding an ink wash. Use the water to help spread it around all over the frosted areas. You will be able to tell where you need to go over if you missed any spots.


STEP 3: Drying Time

So you can see here in this shot, the miniature is washed with the Olive Oil and water. This is what it looks like when drying. Make sure to wash off excess Olive Oil. Too much may not let paint stick to it again. Or even your re-sealer.


STEP 4: RE-SEAL

Now if you want to leave the miniature all shinny, you can. The texture may feel weird, but that is up to you. IF you decide to re-seal, I suggest you wait another 24hrs AFTER the Oil wash to apply any type of sealer.  In this pic here I did re-seal with Testors Dullcoat spray. I did have to wait for a nice day (no humidity) to help ensure that no frosting would take place again.

STEP 5: Enjoy!

And there you have it! The beautiful miniature brought back to its former glory! Sure it took time to get it back, but its worth it. I didnt have to re-paint, or worse yet strip the already painted model. Life realigned itself and everything was good again. Now I can continue on painting more!

Next time I update, hopefully I will have this model completely finished and more along with it. Until then remember: Its not the heat, its the humidity!

Ogroth Ruins-King of the Hill pt3

Here we are, the wrap up post of the newest piece of terrain, the Ogroth Ruins King of the Hill! This will be touching up the final piece painting and flocking. So grab what you want and get ready for some exciting conclusion!

What I used:
Liquitex Basic (acrylic paint)
 -Black, Grey, and White
 - Light Brown, Brown
Woodland Scenics Blended Truf-Green
Woodland Scenics Medium Green Flock
Woodland Scenics Weeds


STEP1: Paint!
So apparently I forgot to take some pictures here. Well as you can see I painted the Stone Alter and the Ballast added from the last post. So here are some finished painted pics of the hill and stone alter. The hill is still the same green we added long ago, the brown ballast was painted using the Acrylic paint Brown, then mixed with light brown, and mixed a bit of white in to raise the color.

 The Stone Alter was painted by mixing the black and grey, then straight grey, grey mixed with white, and finally in highlight areas straight white. It is starting to come together now!

 

 

 

 The pillars were painted in the same fashion as the Stone alter using the same acrylic paints. For the most part these pillars are finished and look great.

 STEP 2: Flock You!
(See I like puns) Now to add the grass for the hill. We are using (Why do I say we? Its just me here) Woodland Scenics Blended Turf, Green blend. This provides an almost natural grass color and has variety of colors in it so as not to be bland 1 color grass. Take your PVA Glue and spread out an area to cover with the grass.

 I pour an extra bit ontop of the glue and press down firmly to stick it in place. Then shake off the excess into the blue tub. NOTE: Make sure blue tub is clean and empty, you dont want bits of stone or other getting into the blend, you can always reuse the excess.

 Continuing flocking until the hill is completely covered. It looks beautiful right now.

 In the same fashion here I used PVA Glue in random spots to stick down some green flock and weeds. The light green patches is the green flock. the green spots on the alter is the Woodland Scenics Weeds.

 Oh la la, she is beautiful! Now lets add all the bits together!
As I mentioned at the beginning of the project this is a terrain piece to be used for Warmachine/Hordes games. As such it can be used for a King of the Hill scenario, it can also be used for the Mosh Pit scenario because of the 14" circle top of the hill. Now because I added so many parts there can be a variety of King of the Hill and as such I have made names for them. I will share the names with each of the pics :)

King of the Hill 

 Super King of the Hill

 Extreme King of the Hill

 Mega King of the Hill

NOTE: Now I realized I said that 5" circle made earlier on that we would get to it...Apparently I missed taking pics of it. Although it was made in the same fashion as the 10" stone alter. cut in half, design outline and paint. This top piece is a stand alone to be added if you so choose as with the pillars.

And there you have the finished piece! It is beautiful and works so well. I will have to get some in game shots with this, but you can fit a 50mm between all the other pillars. Now you can keep the extra bits free form and place when you want (the 8 pillars and the top 5" stone). I am going to add magnets to the bottom of each piece and the top of the hills so that they dont move when being played on.

I declare that this piece be finished! So there you have the Ogroth Ruins- King of the Hill piece. I am going to work more on this set, but first I have to paint something. I think I have an idea. Upcoming in this Ogroth Ruins set are a few more basic hills, some smaller (4"x6") ruins, and an actual mosh pit area! So stay tuned if you like. Until next time...