Friday, July 27, 2012

Dry Earth Bases Tutorial

     This post is going to be a semi product review with a cool tutorial that I have prepared for you guys. Lately I came across a product in my local art supply shop. Facetten-Lack Croco Crackling Colour by Viva Decor .  It's a "structural paint", it means that it takes a certain structures after it dries. In case of this one the structure is an imitation of a cracked ground surface. The cracks depend on how thick the layer of the paint is but Ill get to that later. It comes in many colors but as a small scale mini painter I prefer it white because I'm going to paint it anyway.
 I found some inspiration photos on the web to look at some real natural dried earth and I started working on my 1st base.


     First thing you need to do, and this is really important, is to prepare your surface on which you will be applying the structural paint. On the paint there is an instruction to prime the sub-surface with a Viva decor primer to make it stick but I found out that it's enough to apply some sand on your base and it will do just fine. At this stage it's important to let the pva glue dry completely before applying our crackling paint. It's a cool idea to glue some bits and rocks for decorative purpose on the base at this moment but you can do it later. Next time I'll probably put some skulls and bones on the base when I'll be doing it.

     The base has dried, now we can apply the structural paint. You can go many ways with this. The paint is quite thick, to achieve tiny crackles you should apply a really thin coat of paint but if you want some big cracks you will need to put a nice thick layer. I went with an irregular shape to make it look more natural.


     This is how the dried paint will look like. As you can see there are smaller cracks at the fringe of the base where there was a much smaller coat of paint, and there are big cracks closer to the center where the paint was the thickest.




     After we have our base all dried and crackled, it's time to paint it up. At this point, your imagination is the limit. The drybrush technique will most definitely come in handy and the washes can play a part as well. I airbrushed the whole base dark brown focusing on the gaps to be sure that they are nicely painted to represent the shadow. I think that my paint choices weren't the best here, there's room to experiment you can't go wrong with gray tones on this one.

     Let's sum up. This technique will definitely find its place among some Tomb Kings, Necron Armies and I think it would fit nicely among Thousand Suns. However we don't need to stop there, it can also be useful to represent some wasteland in a diorama. In the end, it's another cool way to help us express ourselves in this hobby. Hope you find this tutorial useful. If you like it, remember to follow me on Facebook to receive updates of new articles on the blog. I leave you with some more insirational photos, go crazy and make something cool.
Brovatar.






13 comments:

  1. Fajny tutek :)
    Właśnie w tym tygodniu kupiłem tą masę. Ja bym jednak nie sypał piasku, jest zbędny. Wystarczy nałożyć PVA i na to bezpośrednio masę.

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  2. Hola
    Tienes un blog muy interesante,con buenos pap.
    un saludo

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  3. Oh wow!
    I really like this.
    Definitely will be trying this out for my Grey Knights

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  4. Oh now that's good! Cracking find Brov. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. Thanks for sharing. I already wondered if this stuff works or if you should stick with the pastes from e.g. Vallejo. But this is definitly cheaper and I think I should give it a try!

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  6. This is great look, thanks for the tip! This would also look really good on larger bases with a little rock thrown in

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  7. Very cool texture. Will have to have a look out for this product now. Can see many places this will help in.

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  8. It would be cool to see what did you managed to achieve with this. If you do feel free to share it in this comment section.

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  9. Great tutorial. One thing, though - using inks makes the earth look shiny and "wet". I would put pigments and/or matt varnish on it.

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  10. Superb guide. This tutorial have inspired me to restart my ork army using these kind of dried-riverbed wasteland type bases.
    I will start a Project log on Warseer some time later, but here is some pictures of the end result on my bases using a similar crackling paint.:
    [IMG]http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/dd380/Zywus/Crackle%20Bases/Fourfinished.jpg[/IMG]
    [IMG]http://i1216.photobucket.com/albums/dd380/Zywus/Crackle%20Bases/Twoorks.jpg[/IMG]

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  11. Those look awesome. I'm glad that my tutorial helped. They look better then the one i did Congratulations Zywus Keep it up!.

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  12. Thank you. I found out that you have to go real careful when applying any paint on the cracked surface. Otherwise they will loose their "sharp" pattern and get a more "rounded" style. My bases are just drybrushed with Bestial brown and then given an ink. Perhaps using an airbrush meant that you got a bit too much paint around the cracks, witch made the corners look a bit rounded.

    /Zywus

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  13. Hi, I just find out Gouache Paints will do the same, all you need to do is apply them on the surface, Viva colour is not a good choice for some country like Canada cause it's really hard to be find, but Gouache Paints is a really good replacement for the Cracking Colour. Sorry about my bad English, but i love your idea.

    Alex

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