Thursday, October 4, 2012

Silas WIP - More Scenic Base Work

The plan for tonight was to clean my living room, but today was super busy and hectic at work, so I vegged on the couch for a bit. Eventually that lead to sliding the painting table over and working on things SDE and Silas related... needless to say the cleaning never happened.



I primed the base and began painting it up tonight. I haven't started on the actual miniature yet, but really I seemed more interested in working on the base more anyway. I went down to the basement and primed it with GW Chaos Black and neglected to pre-paint the pink foam before hand... as I sprayed I noticed the foam slightly bubbling due to the reaction and kicked myself a little for it. But I decided to let it dry and see what happened. Turns out the meltyness wasn't all that bad after all, so I painted the pink foam black and let it all sit for awhile.

Base Primed in Black. Beware the Melty Man!
I cut way some of the more noticeable parts that were left over, like mold flashing to a mini and once it was all dry I started work on painting it up. I mixed up some Army Painter Uniform Gray and Black for the base and then added a little white to it for drybrushing. After the initial drybrush, I added a line of GW Devlan Mud and GW Gryphonne Sepia to the sides to give it some veining. Then drybrushed over this with the lighter gray mix and another slightly lighter gray mix.

I then mixed up some Reaper Muddy Brown, Black and water for a wash and washed down the dirt areas. Once dry this was followed with a few lighter browns to add depth to the dirt. The water areas were washed with a mix of Reaper Pine Green, Earth Brown and water to give it that algae laden swamp feel. This was washed over the still wet dirt wash to let them mix together a little. Once it was dry, I washed the swamp water mix over the water area again to give it a little more green. I may do a light drybrush of a lighter green mix to it. I'm not sure.

Mostly Painted Swamp Base. 
Since this is my first real go at making a swamp base, I'm not sure how far I want to go with the water area. I know that I'll need to add some reeds or even cattails to it. I'm thinking of modeling a lily pad out of some green stuff to put on the surface once I get the water effects into place. The other thing I need to figure out, is how to make the bottom of the large rock look wet. I know I'll likely be glossing the bottom of it, before I pour the water effects. But other than that I'm not sure if that'd be enough?

So far this is what the scene is looking like. I snapped a couple pictures from different angles.
Side-ish View
Front-ish View