[Bleakfalls] Forest, Grass and Rocky Bases

Ingredients

• Very fine sand
• Various sizes of stone
• Birch bracts / Leaf litter
• Army Painters Swamp tufts
• Green Stuff World Tall shrubbery (light green)
• PVA / Wood glue
• Burnt Umber paint
• Titanium white paint
• Neutral grey
• Raw sienna

Step by Step

1. Cover the base in glue and add the stones first, followed by the sand. You could use superglue for the stones first and when those are dried use PVA glue for the sand. Do be quick with this step as the glue will shrink away from the edges as its dries, like in the photo.
2. Paint the whole base burnt umber. You probably need two coats.
3. Dry brush the whole base with raw sienna.
4. Paint the rocks with neutral grey.
5. Dry brush the rocks with titanium white. For a colder look you can skip step 3 and dry bush the whole base with titanium white.
6. Add the foliage and leaf litter using dots of PVA glue.  

                    The ground is dry brushed with titanium white for a cooler look, which is more 

                    fitting for the desaturated style for Bleakfalls.

Some tips

The very fine sand I use is from bird sand. I use two different sieves to get a very fine sand, a fine sand, coarse sand and broken shells. The fine sand and coarse sand can be used as gravel and the broken shells as rouble. 

For the Dutch reader. I sourced my stones from the Action. They sell decorative sand for about 1 euro and, it contains in terms of miniature scale, pebbles, stones and rocks. They come in various colours but I prefer to paint stones. Do give this decorative sand a good rinse, they are covered in dust. 

The story behind the bases

I have been (over) thinking how I want to base my generic fantasy and sci-fi figures, the collection of figures I refer to as Bleakfalls. I want something that is cohesive as I might mix and match sci-fi and fantasy figures in the same game. I rather like Paul Wards* universal basing but I couldn't acquire the colour paints that make it look right. I may revisit it for my historical collection.

I tried out Swords and Brushes tutorial for beginner bases** inspired by the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings game. His results are wonderful but mine didn't turn out that great, I should say I didn't follow his tutorial to the letter. I was more inspired by it. I didn't use any washes and the paints I use are from a craft store. I did use some 3 mm static grass (similar to his) and clump foliage. 

In the end I decided I would use grass tufts instead and tried out Green Stuff World Tall shrubbery (Light Green) that I bought for 6 mm bocage. I also collected some bracts*** of Birch trees to use as leaves. I am fairly with the end result but I may try another base and dry brush the soil with white instead of sienna to make the ground cooler looking.

I can play around with the basing elements ( pebbles, stones, rocks, leaves, bushes and grass). I sci-fi figure might only have stones and no vegetation. I could, sparingly, also add other elements like cobweb for spiders or a skull here and there.

 

*Paul Ward's tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM3kQuCuTT8 & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kH4hFQt-tE. I can really recommend subscribing to his channel, his painting updates are a source of inspiration and joyful to watch.  

**Swords and Brushes's tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G7AvJVflFo. This Youtube channel's focus is on Lord of the Rings painting tutorials including a couple of basing tutorials. 

*** Birch tree produce fruits which they discard for reproduction. Those fruits are held by modified leaves called bracts. Both from the tree or can be harvest clumps (infructence). I collected some from trees and have yet to figure out how to easily separate the fruits and the bracts from each other. But bracts are also sold as leaf litter.