Leaving Home

Hello guys

Today i will write a bigger post. It´s a step by step of my current project. A showbase from a to z.
So get your cookies lay back and enjoy :-)

After planing the base i started with the building shell. I have used plastic card for the borders of the base to achieve clear sides. Often it is a bit confusing to build the terrain over the borders of the plinth.
After that construction i placed cork in the areas i want to have rocks and cliffs. This step is only to save some milliput. You can also use styrofoam or stuff like that. It is just a rough sketch of the terrain.

After this steps it was time to rarefy the rocks. Now i have used milliput. I sculpt every base with milliput because it is cheap and you can achieve nice textures very easily. I placed little frazzles next to each other till i was satisfied with the result. As long as all was wet i have pushed textures in the material with a stone. You can variegate the result with many different stones. Maybe some bigger ones for the main part and some smaller ones for the details. That could be helpful to get a more realistic result. But don´t carry too much attention to this step. When all is dried you have to use your cutterknife to get more texture in the surface.
If you are happy with your texture catch your primer and prime the base with the method you prefer.

Now it should look like this :-)

Now i have used my airbrush for the basework of painting. Some brownish greytones for the rocks and reddisch browntones for the earth between the rocks. Which colours you will use depends from your personal taste so i will not write all the colour names i have used. Just a view on my wet palette before i have started to paint the rocks. I used some greytones from Scale 75 and also some of their inks. I really love the colour range from Scale.
As the rocks were ready i have painted the place between them with a blue basecoat for the following freehand. But first some pics :-)

Ok....Freehands. I often try to avoid it to paint a freehand because i am not a well organized painter. I have never tried to paint a grid for a complex picture so all is intuitionally and not planed. Just as well i don´t like miniatures covered with freehands. Mostly it seems to me the painter used freehands to show his skills and not to enhance the miniature.  But in the past time you can see more and more freehands of terrain involved in a showbase and i like this idea pretty much. So it was time to give myself a try.
I wanted to paint the Erebor because i think it fits perfectly to this rocky base for my dwarf
 from Fernando Ruiz Miniatures .

I have started the freehand with the outlines to get an idea how it will work with the base. The nesxt step was to bring in some surfaces like snow and cliffs to fill the freehand. I have added some tiny lines and scratches to simulate the different volumes of the mountain. Some snow areas here and the. Have added some clouds to bring some life to the sky.

The last step i did was to bring some different light situation. I wanted a dusk lightning for the whole scene so i have added some reddish and yellow tones on the parts were i thought the light would be.
So now here is the current status of the base. I hope you get a feeling for the idea and you have enjoyed this little step by step.

Regards

Thomas