Aris's Basing Tips

[RunecasterAris]

Just wanted to pass along some helpful hints and some of my methodology.

First, always, soap and water wash your base. If you are using pennies, uae a shake of salt into distilled white vinegar as well as a good rinse.

If you're sanding your base use a medium grit sand if you eant to glue on other elements, this seems to hold those elements better. When using this sand, pva/white glue does the trick. I also make a diluted mix of water and glue (no exact measurements, but ir should be white and very thin, almost watery) and submerge my base in it and let it dry. This helps keep the sand in place.

Wjen using static grass, less is more. Make patches on yor badr AFTER painting it. Use pva glue to male the shapesof patches you want, press on a pinch of grass and wait for it to dry. After its dry, blow off the excess.

Most people I see use only one color on their base edges. Thats fine but you can easily use color or patterns to help tell squads appart.

I'll add more soon! I hate posting from a phone.

[inrepose]

Certainly agree with that list. The static grass point is very true - I had a mate offer to paint some 15mm as a swap for some mini's and he coated all the bases with static grass and the result looks terrible.

[RuneCaster_Aris]

I would like to point out that you can BLEND different shades of static grass and it will look *less" bad... but pure flock/pure grass is always a bad idea.

Moving on:

I always paint my model FIRST before painting the base, and always have the model on the base before I do any basing. Here is my reasoning: First, in 15mm most infantry have some kind of base per-attached. Generally, it's never the size or shape you want so you glue it on another base. doing this first means that the sand will build up naturally and will hide this step up in height. Second, as to painting, UNLESS you have something like smooth wood/metal/road work, your model won't look clean and pristine around the feet and shins. I prefer to dry brush on light layers the same as my base around the feet and lower legs to look like mud and dirt from the landscape, this looks more realistic and gives the effect of having been in the field for a bit.

On large bases, you can be a bit more liberal in your basing, but as a rule of thumb, always leave roughly 25% variation. So for example, I usually go sand and static grass. I'll either do 75% of the surface area of my base covered in grass and the rest in visible sand, or vice verse.

On models that are purely for gaming purposes, (read: not for display/painting contests) try not to have too much base overhang. Having shale or other material hanging over the base can make it hard to place a model or determine attackers in close combat. Though this is a personal belief in terms of gaming, I ask you to think of it this way: Would you rather have 5 models touching your base in CQ, or 6? Again, personal belief, but take from it what you will.

Themeing bases is a great practice. If you have an army from Mars (Awesome!) think about the conditions on mars and utilize it. So Mars is sandy with a rocky outcrops and randomly littered. So I would say do something simple like a fine grit sand, 50/50 Red to Orange base with red wash, and a few dark red stones of a larger size on the base. (If you get GW tubs of sand, they have these premixed in the batch, though the sand is too high grain.)

As to Sand baes, like deserts and the like, I feel it's a two part process, first part being a med gain sand as the base layer. Why? Remember how i said that it naturally covered up the step between the two levels of base? That reason. Then after that is dry, do another glue layer and cover in fine grit sand. The easiest way to paint fine grit is to start your base color as your highlight color then use dark washes to get the final color. With Med Grit sand, you can do the same as above but I really find that dry brushing is a much faster, and nicer look in the end.

***
Dry Brushing:
Dip your brush in the paint of your choice, usually a shade or two above the current color. Then wipe off majority of the paint on a paper towel until such a point that it seems like no matter how hard you press only the very top fibers of the paper towel are getting any paint. Them brush your model. Repeat. You can use the mopped up paint from your first wiping to fill your brush for a second, third, and fourth passing.

Layering colors of dry brush can make anything from lava fields/burning earth (white => yellow => orange => red => light layer of black) to short grass (dark green= med green => light green => light layer of bone)

[inrepose]

Yes it certainly is worth blending the grass types. GW do a pot of black burnt grass and it blends very well to darken lighter grass types.

Sometimes small clumps on terrain areas can help a lot and using longer grasses like the Noch brand.


This was work in progress but you can see some of the different blends going onto the board:


This is later in the project and the static grass has blended well, so well you can hardly see it which I guess is the result you want. I spent a lot of time studying the planet earth series and a charity Africa walk which was on TV to try and get the dry riverbed right and also have clumps of grass with the green showing. It is amazing how green a desert can be!

[inrepose]

I have some video of this layout:

Here:



and here:

If you pause about 5-10 seconds into this video you can see how well the blended static glass and clumps look under the Critical Mass Games Arc grav tanks.