GF9.com Tutorials presents:
Basing your Miniatures - A study in Aesthetics.
Hello Everyone! This will be
the first in a new series of tutorials about the hobby of miniature wargamming.
It is our hope that you (the reader) will find this material helpful and
informative. These tutorials are met to be informal observations about the
topic at hand. The opinions and conclusions made are those of its author
and are not necessarily those of the management. So, without further ado,
let us begin.......
Basing
your Miniatures - A study in Aesthetics.
Over the last few years I have
been attending lots of Miniature's Related Tournaments and Conventions. At
these events I have had the opportunity to see "literally" hundreds of painted
armies, consisting of thousands of miniatures, from many different gaming
systems. Some of the armies are truly works of art that should be locked
behind glass and admired for their beauty and never touched for fear of ruining
the paint job (what fun it that?) Most others are painted to what I like
to call a "gaming standard" which means that the figures are painted cleanly
and the characters are converted with a little extra "attention to detail".
Then there are those whose armies look like they were painted in the last
week to the required "three color rule" (but hey, at least they get to play!)
After making a conscious effort to analyze the things that made one army
stand out from another, it occurred to me that all the armies I thought really
looked good had one thing in common, they ALL had great looking bases.
I then started looking at armies that I thought were nice but just didn't
do it for me and guess what, the bases were neglected.
Maybe it's just me, but I think figures just look better when properly
bases. Even figures with o.k. paint jobs (like me!) look ten times better
when based to a high standard. Don't just take my word for it, you
be the judge!
eBay: a source of inspiration!
At any given time hundreds of painted miniatures can be found on eBay.
Their quality ranges from bare metal to GW's Golden Daemon Standard and
cover everything in between. The other night I went threw eBay a picked
out an assortment of pictures of figures being sold, paying particular attention
to the bases.
Remember, this is a case study on basing your figs so try
to LOOK AT THE BASES, not the paint jobs (although some of the paint
jobs are amazing!)
SCALE: A good friend
of mine won the GW City Fight Terrain Suggestion Contest held a while back
by saying, the most important thing to remember when making terrain is to
have a figure handy to keep everything in the correct scale. If you think
about, a base is nothing more then a small scale piece of terrain that your
figure ALWAYS sits on. i.e. try to keep the grass, flock and sand
in scale with the figure.
CONSISTENCY:
There are two schools of thought when basing figs: (1) Make the base look
exactly like the gaming table so that the figure appears to blend into the
surrounding terrain. (2) Make the base appear like its own piece of terrain
so that it might blend with any type of surrounding terrain. Both styles
can work equally well. So pick a style and be consistent through out
your army. i.e. pick a theme and stick with it.
COLOR: When basing your
figs, try to picks colors that are in contrast to you miniatures. i.e. If
you painting a Dark Angle army, it might be better to use lighter colors (like
grays or browns) on the bases so that you figures stand out from the base
and don't become lost in a sea of green. Remember there are ALWAYS exceptions
to this rule but in general contrast looks best. You don't want the base to
distract the eye from the figure itself.
BASE EDGES: In general,
it is better to paint the edge of the base a contrasting color to the top
of the base. i.e. if you have lots of green on your base then make the edges
a brown or black. If there is lots of gray and black on you bases then the
edges might look better as darker shade of green. Another thing I've noticed
is that bases look better if the edges are CLEAN. i.e. are free of flock
and static grass.
Once again there are exceptions to this, but the base edges that WORKED
used very little base edge dressup to help accent the rest of the base itself.
The AMAZING Champion below is a perfect example of when it works.
Basing your
Miniatures - A Step by Step Guide to Basing your Figures.
Now lets see just how easy it really is to make your
bases look good.
Before you start: Collect your basing supplies
This is the list of supplies I used when basing my army for the tutorial:
- Elmers White Glue
- Model Railroad Ballast Mix (10% Course - 30% Medium - 60% Fine)
- Static Grass (Green/Brown Mix)
- Acrylic Paints (One bottle for each shade of highlight)
- Black Wash (60% Flat Black Acrylic Paint - 40% Water)
- Paint Brush (for painting and dry brushing)
- Paint Brush (for applying glue to bases)
- Wax Paper (for putting freshly painted figs on - saves the table)
- Cup of Warm Water (for washing brushes)
- Tooth Picks (for applying glue for static grass)
Step ONE: Applying
texture to your base
Start by putting a large glob of glue (glob, it's an industry term)
on some wax paper. Using you old glue brush to paint a thick film of glue
across the top surface of the base as shown. Try not to get any on the sides
of the base. If you do then you'll have to wipe it off later. I find it helps
to keep the glue brush wet when applying glue. Some people recommend mixing
the glue 50/50 with water before brushing it on. I have tried the method
and find that sometimes that ballast does not stick as well to the base.
Take the freshly glued base and
swirl it around the inside of your ballast container. After about 3-5 seconds
take it out and "tap" off the extra ballast that did not stick to the glued
surface. When your finished tapping give it a quick blow to get any extra
dust off and set it aside on a waiting sheet of wax paper. Allow plenty
of time for the glue to dry before moving on to the next step. Usually 10-15
minutes is more then enough. I recommend basing large groups (10-20) of
figures at a time so that some of the figures will be dry when you move
on to the next step.
Let's quickly discuss railroad ballast. Ballast is a type of crushed rock
that is used on model railroad layouts around the tracks to make the rails
look like they are one a bed of crushed rock. What's nice about this stuff
is that the sizes of the rocks are always uniform and the distinct lack of
"dust" on the bits themselves. The lack of dust is important if you want
the ballast to stay on the bases. Have you ever been to a tourney and found
bit of sand and flock all over the table left by the last army that played
there? If so then you have seen first hand the effects of dust covered base
material. So people just us plain cheap sand. What happens with plain sand
is that the glue sticks to the dust on the sand and not the sand itself.
Over time the sand simply fall off the bases. It is very much like gluing
two painted pieces of material together. The glue is sticking to the paint
and not the figure itself. If the paint doesn't hold then the bond won't
hold either. The ballast I used is from Woodland Scenics (available at most
hobby stores) and comes in many different colors and sizes. The color does
not matter (your going to paint it anyway) but the size does. Remember the
talk about scale? Well, you want to make the sizes of rocks look as real
as possible. What works for me is mixing course/medium/fine ballasted together
in a 10/30/60 ratio to get a look of mostly flat ground with a few large
sized rocks tossed around.
You might have noticed from that pictures that some of the bases are metal.
I really enjoy the weight of a metal figure in my hands and the new plastic
figures just don't feel the same to me. When I have time I cast my own pewter
bases. When painting metal you'll notice later that sometimes the paint won't
coat the base in one pass. No big deal, just keep applying thin coats of paint
until its covered.
Step TWO: Sealing
the ballast to the base with Black Wash or Spray Primer
If you assemble and glue you models to their bases BEFORE priming
them you'll find it MUCH EASIER to seal the ballast to the bases. Simply
glue your untrimmed model to the base, glue to ballast as described in Step
ONE, then prime the ENTIRE model (balloted base and all) in one easy step.
If your usually prime your models in black then your ready to advance
to Step THREE. If you prime your models in white then you should continue
with the black wash step which I will describe shortly. Unless your doing
some "super special one of a kind" scenic base them I always recommend base
coating your bases in black. It will help your dry brushing look more realistic.
Black Washing is nothing more then applying very watered down black paint
to your bases to help seal the ballast in place and color the base pallet
black so that you have a uniformed dark, clean surface to start from. You
can use straight black paint (flat, never gloss) but you'll find it is much
harder to coat the base quickly and completely if the paint is too thick.
When the wash has been applied set it aside until it is COMPLETELY dry before
completing. If you don't wait for the wash to dry the ballast might start
moving around when you dry brush and you may have to start all over again.
Step THREE: Shading
your bases by Dry Brushing
No matter what paint
scheme you decide on to make your bases the steps are always the same. The
only thing different in the checklist will be your
color selection. I tend to paint all of my bases the same way in all my armies. If you ever check out my game room you will find
three 40K armies and one fantasy army all painted with the same brown, broken
ground type bases. I did this because I make my
open area game tables in the same color scheme (i.e. bases disappear into
the table) and the color scheme just seems to match my
painting style. Also, another great feature of basing my armies this way
is that as I add more models to the armies that new bases will always match
my old ones. Especially since I keep my four (4) highlight colors is there
own special box along with all my other basing material. You might have noticed
I'm using the folkart paint. While folkart paint is definitely not the same
quality as Citadel for example, the quality is more then enough for painting
and dry brushing all types of non miniature items, like movement trays, scenery, terrain,
and of course, bases. An let's face it, at $0.50 per 2 oz. bottle (on sale
at Michaels or Pearl) how can you go wrong?
What is Dry Brushing? Dry Brushing is when you load up your paint brush
with a paint color, then "wipe the brush clean" on the back of your hand or
a paper towel until almost all the color is out of the brush. The painter
now takes this "dry brush" (isn't that clever) and runs it across a textured
surface which will produce "highlighting" of the selected color. The amount
of color and the level of highlighting is in direct relationship to how
hard your rub the brush over the painted surface, how much paint is left
in the brush, and what kind of shade color was chosen to make the highlight
to begin with.
In general, the painter wants to start with dark colors first and work
up through the various shades to create a "highlight/shadow" effect. Sound
complicated? Well its really very easy to do. For my color pallet I
started with Black Wash (Very dark), followed by Deep Brown (dark), followed
by Earth Brown (medium), followed by Yellow/Brown (medium/light), and finally
Buttermilk (like Bleached Bone or Off White) to create the final highlight.
You might be saying to yourself, "Self, four levels of highlight will take
forever!" Not true! I did over 50 figures for this tutorial from start to
finish in just over 3 hours.
Highlight #1: Deep Brown (dark)
Do a fast dry brush of Deep Brown over the entire base of the figure. Remember
this is a FAST dry brush, don't spend a lot of time on it. Just make sure
you get the color over most of the base surface. Just like in the pictures
below.
Highlight #2:
Earth Brown (medium)
Do a fast dry brush of Earth Brown over the entire base of the figure.
Just like before, this is a FAST dry brush. Once the entire surface is brushed
then it's time to paint the base edges. I've found that when using the four
highlight method of mass painting that the second color in the highlight
tends to look best as the base edge color. (Go figure?) Use plenty of paint
on the brush this time as apply color all around the base edge in long, smooth
strokes. Don't worry if it does not cover completely the first time. We'll
have it do it one more time at the end to cover all the highlighting over
brushing that we'll (me) be doing in the next two highlights.
Highlight #3:
Yellow Brown (medium/light)
Do a fast dry brush of Yellow Brown over the entire base of the figure.
Don't worry about making a mess or over brushing, we'll fix it later. Notice
is the first picture below the earth brown did not totally cover the base
on the last go around and I also had some over brushing from the Yellow
Brown. No big deal....
Highlight #4:
Buttermilk; final highlights and base edge touch up
At this point it a good idea to lock up your children, siblings, pets,
etc. as they can all prove to be major distractions. I Almost lost the camera
on this one! Now, for the forth time, we dry brush the final highlight to
the base. Once finished it's now time to fix the base edge errors
we made earlier. Simply go back to the earth brown and re-paint the base
edge one more time. You will find that the paint will cover much better
the second time and really puts a "finished look" on the base.
Time out, I'm
being attacked!
(there is no save vs. a one year old)
Sorry about that! 
Step FOUR: Adding
realism with Static Grass
Alrighty then, were ALMOST finished! This is my favorite part, Static
Grass.
Static grass is a man made fiber that when used correctly can give the appearance
of "grass" on a piece of terrain or a battlefield. Static grass comes is lots
of different colors and is really easy to use. Simply smear (another industry
term) some white glue on your painted base with a toothpick, put a gob of
static grass on the glued area with your fingers, and finally shake the excess
off the base and back into the grass container. How easy is that? The final
step is to blow across the freshly grassed area a few time to make the static
grass "stand up". That's right boys and girls, by blowing across the static
grass a small charge of "static electricity" will build up on the static
grass and make it stand right up in place. When the glue dries the static
grass will stay at attention and give the appearance on real grass on your
base.
And there you have it! Nicely
painted bases for your nicely painted models...
Well, I hope you found this little
rant informative and helpful. If anyone out there uses this process I'd love
to see some pictures of how it all turned out. If you have any other questions
feel free to drop me an eMail and I'll be glad to help out in anyway I can.
Remember, people can only get smarter when we share what we know.
Game ON!
John Kovaleski
www.GF9.com
mailto: john@gf9.com
