If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know I’ve spent a few weeks painting up a SCE Underworlds warband. They’re nearly finished now. I’m just waiting for some paints to arrive before I can paint a face and some flower freehand. [#spoileralert, I’ve started painting the face and it’s gone terribly – read about it here]. One of the models doesn’t need either of those things though so with her base now finished, I think she’s done. This is how painting moulded bases for my SCE gang was knocked up quickly and easily.
Painting moulded bases
I hear a lot of hate for painting moulded bases but I’m cool with them. I’ve got a railway modelling background so I could probably get into realistic basing but I haven’t so far. Anyway, I’m just enjoying the process of painting for the point of the process itself at the moment. For me, painting moulded bases is just more to paint and that’s not a bad thing.
It’s still the model
Even though I’m painting through intrinsic motivation I still felt this weird rush of blood at the beginning of the base painting. It feels very final and like once it’s done, I can move on to something else. I resisted this and decided to spend as much time as it took to make these bases look good. I’m pleased, so far, with the models themselves. It would make no sense to rush the bases on models that I’ve bought just to paint so I can go out and buy more models I just want to paint. The point here is the painting, so I’m just relaxing into it.
Painting moulded bases to match the model
These models are painted in quite a cold palette. There’s quite a lot of dark and light contrast in the NMM already and I think the model itself is quite balanced. So I didn’t want to stack this and paint the moulded bases in a desert theme or some other warm tones. I want the contrast on the models not between the models and the base (more of that later) so anyone looking doesn’t know what to look at first.
So how did they come out and what was the process?
Let’s break the process down into the three key areas: Stone, vines and leaves.
Stone
First of all, stop what you’re doing and watch Vince’s Hobby Cheating video on painting stone. He really nails it. My steps were as follows:
- Paint the whole base a mid tone grey (I’m going to come back over the top to paint the vines and leaves so no need to be neat here)
- Drybrush with white
- Wash with diluted black ink
- Drybrush white again.
That’s the preparation phase. Now time to add some colours
- Agrax Earthshade into the gaps and areas where water would collect. The Agrax goes on first because it’s the least colourful wash I’m going to be using but also very dark so the other colours will show up better if they’re on top of this.
- A wash over some of the same areas but also some of the paving stones with Vallejo Game Ink Black-green. this was mopped off of the stones just leaving a stain but no coffee marks
- A dry brush with white to reinforce the highest highlights
- A further very dilute wash with Seraphim Sepia.
I think it’s important to use a wash as the final step rather than dry brushing because dry brushing can look quite chalky. A wash smooths that out.
Vines
These were really easy actually. If you reference dead vines then they are a sort of grey-white. I was worried that this wouldn’t read against the stone so anyone looking will have to suspend their disbelief. Although the base is winter themed, the vines are alive and green.
These were a dark blue green (Caliban Green from Citadel) with some Averland Sunset highlights wet blended in. I didn’t use any glazed shading here because the vines are quite small and I thought the risk of losing control of that shading was bigger than the effect might be. I think they look pretty cool as they are.
Leaves
Righto, the leaves are the bit that really adds the visual interest. It’s meant to read as a cold base but what happens to fallen leaves in winter? They turn warm colours. That is a great opportunity for some spot contract against the cool stone colours. They were super easy (based with Mournfang Brown and some Ember Orange (P3) wet blended in as highlights.
P3 Orange
Quick commentary on the Ember Orange by P3. Don’t bother. If the P3 blue paints are some of the nicest paints I’ve ever used (see my review here), the orange is at the other end of the enjoyment scale. The red paints (see here) weren’t winning any awards but the orange here has very weak coverage. It also clumped when thinned – I ended up using it neat. Despite that I still had to make several passes to get any kind of mark against the Mournfang Brown.
The upside is that it’s a gorgeous colour. Really unusual and striking. Maybe ‘don’t bother,’ is a bit harsh and paint behaviours are neither a good or bad thing. They’re just a think you have to know in advance but the clumping wasn’t cool.
I’ve ordered a set of red and yellow ScaleColor paints which will arrive soon so I think I’ll have this kind of colour covered in the future.
Do you black your rims?
This is awkward. I never used to, my rationale being that I wanted all of my contrast to be on the model not on the edge of the base and that black is such a magnet for the eye. However, most of my mates are black edgers. I’ve blacked them in this instance and they look alright. Dunno, I need more time to think about this maybe.
What do you do?
Comments always welcome.