Rocky Base Tutorial

Hi everybody!

Well, quite a long time since my latest update, but I didn't waste that time and I managed to paint some new models, mainly to my High Elves army, but also some minor conversions and kit bash.
Some time ago someone asked me how I do my rocky shore bases. Few days ago I built a new model of my Star Lance Noble and I had to make a base for him. Then I decided to make some photos of the painting process and to make a very short tutorial. Maybe someone will find a use of it;)

1) Step 1: Preparing the base

As you can see, I'm using very simple materials as well as simple methods to create my bases. The rocks are made of cork, GW (or whatever) sand and some small stones. I sculpted the waves with miliput, very quick and satysfying effect in my opinion, especially for table-top minis. Miliput needs some time to dry, that's why I made it in the evening and moved on next day after work;)

2) Step 2: Basecoat

Well, above title says everything, I basecoated my base with chaos black, waited 'till it's dry and I moved to step 3;)

3) Step 3: 1st Layer

Now when the basecoat is dry, I'm usually using an old-school drybrush method, it never disappointed me. I put the 1st layer of drybrush with Vallejo model color paint, but I used to do it with leather brown for GW pallet, the difference is hardly noticeable at that stage and doesn't really matter.

4) Step 4: Highlight
Well, the following step is simply adding a little bit skull white to our base color, let's say 1:4 White-Brown and again our favourite drybrush has to find its use;)

5) Step 5: 2nd Highlight

This step is just repeating the step 4, I added againg a little bit of skull white to mixture and againg did some drybrush work.

6) Step 6: Water

This is the part of the base which makes it more attractive and creates my main army theme - rocky shore(Baywatch fun;p).
I started with painting the whole water area with Teclis Blue.

7) Step 7: Dark Blue Wash

Now I want to create some shades. I just want to remind you, that it's a very simple and fast way of painting the bases, that's why I'm using here just very pure and simple techniques to obtain the desired effect as quickly as possible. That's why I just used a Vallejo Lavado Azul wash and applied it all over the water area.

8) Step 8&9: Highlights

Another step is to paint some highlights on waves. I'm using a mix of teclis blue and skull white in 4:1 proportion accordingly to the step and I'm drybrushing it cautiously again and again leaving the deep areas a little more darker.

9) Step 10: Water effect

Now it's time to use some water effect. There are several kinds of that stuff, I have on my own 2 different ones from no name companies which I found in artistic store. In this example I used a Gelmedium from Reeves, covering the water area all over with that stuff. This is how I looked at that stage.

10) And after it dried:

11) And with the model on top:

That's all;))