Sunday 1 February 2009

Confessions of a Basing Nazi Part 3

The next step is to paint the bases. I use a pot of paint I mix up from cheap tubes of acrylic- lots of Raw Umber, and some tan colour and a little Buff Titanium. I roughly drybrush this over the brown of the base, and then drybrush successive coats with the mix diluted with more Buff Titanium until I achieve a fairly light colour.

Here we have a comparison shot that shows that the base colour is much lighter than when I started (bottom left base). The bottom right base is one of the templates from earlier, that I've used to check that the colour is roughly correct.


After this I seal with Testors Lacquer, into which I mix a tiny bit of brown oil paint, which helps tie the colours of the base together, seal it against water damage, and above all make it very matt.


So here is my discovery of the month; Silflor tufts. These come ready made and one can quickly stick them into place. They will replace the tufts you can see on the archers (below) which I laboriously cut and trim from hair, dyed green, and which can take a whole evening to do for a couple of units.


The archers above have been "dressed" with some Silflor, static grass, a twig and some of the hair tufts (which still need to be trimmed).


Finally, here are the BTD legionaries, which I am really pleased with, because they will bring a little variety to my Saleh EIR army. I've replaced all the legionaries' shields with Foundry shields. I'm especially pleased with the Optio who is lightly converted from a Praetorian...

8 comments:

Grégory Privat said...

haha ! "Silflor tufts." I ve ordered some in prevision off my Spartacus army yesterday night !

BigRedBat said...

They are a fantastic time-saving device. I think the mixed colour ones are great!

Grégory Privat said...

I ve taken :

6mm X-LONG LATE SUMMER PRAIRIE TUFTS,

SPRING GREEN BUFFALO GRASS,

TALL 4MM SPRING PASTURE TUFTS

and some ordinary

1 lb. BULK SPRING GREEN STATIC FLOCK
because i was going out of stock )

Matt said...

Good looking bases indeed. One question though ... why did you replace all the BTD legion shields with Foundry shields? They look great.

Cheers

Matt

BigRedBat said...

Hi Matt,

I saw your post on the WAB forum and answered it there! This link

http://www.displacedminiatures.com/BigRedBat/image/2362/22319/

Shows why I decided to replace the shields...

Cheers, Simon

BigRedBat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
carabus said...

Excellent bases!

The spikes you have on the bases for the Romans, where did you get them please, I am after some as well.

Thanks :)

Neil

BigRedBat said...

Hi Neil, they are from 1st Corps; nice products.