Basing and ground work

Trial layout

Milliput ground work

No update for a few weeks I’m afraid.  Real life and family issues overwhelming any painting time.  However this last week a few bits got done.  I also got seven old issues of the Figure International magazine off eBay :)

I continued to work on the base for my 54mm knight.  Originally I was going to use some foam to make up some of the ground work but decided that it was unnecessary.  Instead I used Milliput (standard) to make some rolling ground work.  I really like the water soluble nature of Milliput and you can shape it with a wet paint brush.  I however dislike  the slime factor which is why I normally use green stuff for ground work.  I always end up with yellow slime hands that smell for a day or so.  For the bigger base Milliput was a more cost effective solution.  Plus my Milliput has almost gone off so I wanted to get some use of out it.

Rear view of first paint trial

Once the Milliput had dried I primed with Vallejo black primer and then painted all the ground with VGC Earth.  This was then shaded with VGC Charred Brown and VGC Khaki.  After that I coated all the ground with matt varnish to take off some of the shine caused by the glazing.  The end result wasn’t what I was after.  I just looked like brown paint.  I should have textured the Milliput with some sand rather than leaving it smooth.

Breaking out the oil colours I re-did the ground.  I shaded down the burnt umber, payne’s grey and phthalo blue and shaded up with burnt sienna and white.  The blue added to the shadows really worked well.  I had picked this up from reading a few oil painting books.  This also matches up with real life (almost like those painters know what they are talking about) as when it gets darker things get bluer.  This was left to semi dry overnight.  I could have done this with acrylic paints but I just like playing with the oil paints.

Oil paint make great mud

The next day I got the white and a small amount burnt sienna and padded the white paint onto the ground where I thought snow fall would sit.  Not dry brushing, more like sponge applying but with a brush.  This resulted it the ground colour still being visible but there being a white covering/dusting.  Where the rock/tree was overhanging the ground I left the ground colour as is.  I was afraid that the contrast of the brown ground with the stark white flock/etc would be too much.  I think this will make a very good underlay and transition to the later snow effects I have trialled.

Rear view of the "snow" dusting

Now to wait a few days for the oil paints to dry before going onto the next stage and adding the snow effect products.