Basing: painting rocks and ground

If you want a quick introduction to a whole array of simple, quick, cheap yet effective basing techniques, i recommend watching this playlist. The dude is utterly 40K-focused but the techniques are pretty universal. This includes many instances of what you ask for. Watch it, get the general idea, then start experimenting, as nothing teaches you better than seeing things with your own eyes.

 

The most basic thing I use consist on sanding a little the base, so the glue sticks better, and then I glue the miniature, with a pin if needed. Then, I apply a coat on the base made with PVA and a little water, remove the excess (sides, boots/feet), and submerge it in sand (pour sand in a recipient where the base, with the miniature, is placed until it covers it).

Once it is dry, basecoat all. Then, to paint it, Vallejo's Cold Grey + Black, let it dry, and dry brush with white. It looks great for very cheap materials and few working minutes.

 

I use the Vallejo mud effects a lot for soil and I glue rocks and other buts down prior to applying it. Here are some examples (Sorry, Corvus... They aren't infinity models).

Also.. sorry.. the only pictures I can find have been slightly processed through a prisma filter. You'll get the idea though.






If you're interested, I can get you the exact name of the stuff I use. The pipes and metal scraps are just pieces of plastic I had laying around.

 

Thankfully the vids are 2-3 minutes long so the whole playlist likely can be watched in a single break. The rest of his channel has more stuff, but almost all the basing he's posted is on that playlist.

Most of the time there's no need to even water it down, you can use it as is. You'll see the dude in the videos doing it a bunch of times as part of some basing schemes, he spreads glue, sprinkle and/or dip in sand as needed, shake off the excess, then prime and paint.

He does the basing before starting to paint the mini, so it gets primed along with it. Saves time.

He'll be able to give his way of use it, but that kind of stuff in general is ready to use from the bottle/jar, you just spread it as needed and let it dry. It's mostly what the instructions on the package say.

 

Adding water to the PVA helps it to flow, and not have undesired lumps (you can always add later some larger sand pieces with gel superglue. In this case, using gel-based superglue is less optional than usual, since the liquid one will flow and potentially cover the recesses of the sand), you can also add a drop of dishwasher so there won't be any surface tension... but you will need to make a lot of the mix at once (because a single drop is a lot for the amount used for bases).

Priming is both because I use cheap decoration sand (back in the day I used river sand, but I no longer have that option), and its a little too garish, and because it helps to help it all together in case of drops and other accidents, or when I carry the models inside foam trays (which can be abrasive if you are not careful). Also, since I prime the miniature (first) and then the base (but in one go, I just start from the top) using a brush, I remove the excess sand that hasn't glue properly, so I won't have a sand-shedding miniature when I'm moving the model, painting the base, or dry brushing it.

The only downside to this is the color, since the mix of cold grey + black is a nice and soft dark color I like a lot more than pure black or graphene grey (which is more or less a 50/50 mix of black and white).

Another basing method I use is a lump of milliput with some slight trenches and side holes carved (using wooden barbecue skewers), white primed and washed with Vallejo's Sepia Ink (which is, incidentally, a great way to paint a white-primed miniature on "crude leather") with some highlights in brown and gray.

 

No problem. It's called Vallejo Thick Mud. Here is a picture of the 200ml pot.



It's a paste, so you just apply it with a stiff brush over your base. Here is a video showing you how to use it.



I hope that helps!

 

Right on. I'm glad I could help, buddy. If you want to make it look even muddier - mix it with some static grass.

 

5 minute epoxy should do it. Good luck getting it off though once it's in. You don't want to use super-glue on any sort of clear plastic, as it will frost over.