Today was an interesting day as I held my first "basing" oriented
private tuition session! Up until now all my students have wanted either sculpting or (mainly) painting oriented tuition, So thanks Caleb for having given me the possibility to do something new as well!
Caleb wanted to create some simple yet effective bases for his Skaven army, and a powerful evocative base for a Warmachines Lord Exhumator Scaverous. When he arrived all these were mounted on their simple plastic bases; when he left... well you'll see at the end of this little article! The painting of these bases, and possibly others, will be for a future session.
Skaven Army
The aim was to help Caleb create an interesting yet simple base design that he could easily replicate over his entire army. The other major factor was that his entire army is already glued to its bases, so we needed something that could easily be built up around the models rather than have him pull an unimaginable quantity of ratmen off their bases. So a few pictures to show what Caleb learnt today!:
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| Quick and easy ruts and wheel marks! |
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| Texturing off rough, muddy/swampy terrain |
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| Serious concentration: thy name is Caleb! |
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| Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best! Here: the use of glue on grass tufts |
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| And finally: real earth!! |
The Lord Scaverous
Caleb wanted something to really enhance the pose of this hefty and imposing model. After a bit of brainstorming he went for a ruined paved floor that seemed to be rising up above the level of the ground.
Here I introduced him to the really useful stuff you can find in your everyday arts and crafts store (and your garden funnily enough), the art of texturing milliput to blend it into the surrounding textures, and above all the key concepts involved in the conceptualisation of a base before even getting your putty and glue out.
The great advantage here was that the Scaverous could be removed from his base, so we were able to have a completely free hand in building the base.
So more pictures!:
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| Poor sleepy Scaverous... Caleb will soon have you back on your feet! |
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| A small selection of the array of basing materials I spread out for Calebs' selection. He went for the grey tiles mainly. |
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| And here he is hard at work with his selection! |
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Although it is not very clear: here Caleb discovers the joys of salvaging cut-off pieces and texturing milliput.
His concentration is still just as visible! |
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| Hard at work with more piles of stuff for his own pleasure! |
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| And the final base, including the use of real earth! |
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| The same, from above (the "X"s mark the rough position of the models feet so as to be sure NOT to flock there before fixing the model to the base.) |
Well that made for a fun couple of hours! I enjoyed it immensely, thank you Caleb for having been a patient student! I'm really looking forward to seeing these painted, as I am looking forward to seeing your future and now improved basing projects!
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| Happy man at the end of the session contemplating his handiwork! |
Keep on enjoying your hobby people!
If you want to improve your basing abilities, or any other aspect of your Hobby, then get in touch!:
tinypeoplestudio@gmail.com
I'll be more than happy to do all I can to help you get more out of your Hobby!
