Basing Part II: Painting the Base

For my Bane Thralls/Tartarus I've decided to paint the ground a bone-colored theme to compliment the paints I used on the models(skulls, wrappings) while still adding contrast to the model as a whole. What colors you use is really up to you, but here's how I did mine.

The first step is to apply a coat of a deep brown. I chose Umbral Umber, but any dark color will do. You get this down first because it's what you want the darkest shadows to be, everything else will be dry brushed on top. Make sure you thin the paint when you do this one, you want it to get in all the crevices.

Next I mixed the Umbral Umber with a little bit of Battlefield Brown and Bootstrap Leather. The Bootstrap Leather lightened it to a very milk chocolateish color while the Battlefield brown muted the saturation a bit. This still isn't dry brushing, just brush very lightly. This will add depth to the shadows and make a good base to dry brush onto.

Now I was pretty much out of paint to work with, so I started over with some Bootstrap Leather and just a touch of Battlefield Brown. This is when I started to dry brush. Only wipe a little paint of the brush, you aren't doing highlights yet. Painting bases is all about working from dark to light, since having to add shadow later on usually implies a step backward(or several). Avoid this by building up slowly. You'll be rewarded with awesome looking basses!

Here's where you'll see the previous steps pay off. Bootstrap leather was too saturated and with an orange, flesh-like color to use on it's own, so I lightened and muted it a bit with some Menoth White Base. I then dry brushed this over the gravel 2 or 3 times, going lighter on the paint each time.

Next up was straight Menoth White Base dry brushed over several times. Make sure you're wiping a lot of paint off the brush now.

After that I did very very light layers of Menoth White Highlight. At this point you should be wiping a lot of pait off the brush to the point where it doesn't look like you're doing anything. If you need proof that you are, give the black part of the base a brush and see.

And a final highlight of Morrow White, very very lightly dry-brushed.


Your final step should be painting the rest of your base black again. It's no doubt coveredin dry-brush lines. Now you're ready to add the flock and what-have-you. Check the next article, Basing Part III: Adding Flock for a short how-to.